Infantile love follows the principle: I love because I am loved. Mature love follows the principle: I am loved because I love. - Erich Fromm
Oh, this. Yes. The more unconditional my love, the happier I am. As the reading says this morning in For Today, "I love you; whether you love me is beside the point." It is such an accepting place to love because I love and for no other reason.
One of my breakthrough emotional moments in the last year was realizing, all of a sudden, that as I send out my loving kindness meditation to all sentient beings, someone somewhere I don't even know is sending loving kindness back to me. I'm one of the sentient beings who receives loving kindness.
Yesterday had all the potential to be wobbly - I was rejected for an exercise at the conference I'm attending in favour of a skinny girl, precisely because she was skinny and easier to work with as a result. I understand that and the guy was kind about it. But it still hurts. How little sense it makes to binge because I'm too fat. The craziness of this disease is remarkable (and so common it somehow doesn't seem crazy in the moment: "of course I should eat chocolate to make myself feel better for being too fat").
So I choose to love simply because it feels good. On this Valentine's Day, I send love to all beings, whether they love me or not!
Blessed be.
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