Love is...

Love is...(insert all of the quotes and poems and information you've ever heard or felt here).

Love may be all or none of those things but I think that Gary Chapman, author of The Five Love Langauges, is really trying to get at how each person feels love.  Not only this, but also how giving love in the way a person feels it (or not) can be the difference between a mutual love persisting or not.  As Gary writes: 

People are different. What makes one person feel loved will not necessarily make another person feel loved. By nature, we tend to express love to others in the way we wish they would express love to us. When our spouse doesn't respond positively to our expressions of love, we get frustrated. The problem is not the sincerity of our love; the problem is that we are speaking the wrong love language. If we speak our own love language but not our mate's, we will fail to communicate.

Love, then, is not enough in and of itself, if it is not communicated in a way that the receiver of that love recognizes it.  That is to say, we all have different ways of receiving love, the same way that we all have different ways of learning or receiving information; Some people really need visual information to learn, while others need to be physically involved in the learning process or it will never stick.  The same is true with love, according to Chapman.  Like teachers, lovers also tend to err when they stick to solely teaching or loving others in the way that they themselves learn or receive love the best.  If you learn from simply hearing lectures, it is easy to assume that this is how all of your students will learn, because that is your personal experience with receiving information.  Similarly, in love, if you feel love when other people touch you, it is only natural for you to feel that the best way to express your love for others is through physical touch.  

What Chapman explains, though, is that in love, there are five major modes of expressing love that trigger a receiver to feel the love that you are giving: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, and Physical Touch.  Each of us tends to feel love when it is shown in certain of these categories, while when love is shown to us via the means of a different category, it's as if the lover were simply talking about the color of the wall; it just doesn't translate for us.  

For this reason, understanding and communicating to your partner about what makes you feel love is really important, not only for your satisfaction, but also for theirs.  Imagine the confusion and stress it must cause to be giving love in the way you think another person should understand, but having that person tell you they feel unloved.  It would certainly be frustrating and hurtful to feel that the person you love feels unloved even despite all of your efforts.  We all know that loving (in any of these modes) takes a lot of courage! Your partner or yourself may feel like your efforts to show your love are unappreciated when in reality they might simply not be translating for the other person in the relationship since it isn't their "love reception style" the same as hearing lectures isn't my learning style and will never translate into useful or memorable information for me because it just doesn't.  If you give me gifts, while I appreciate them, they don't necessarily make me feel more loved.

I highly encourage you to do this exercise with the people that you love;  Take a look at the brief online series that gives the background and basics of the love languages.  If you are feeling that there is no hope, be sure to read the whole thing, anyways and to remember your unconditional love.  When we are feeling unloved or unappreciated, we often shut down or push others away.  The love languages can also be a way to open both ourselves and others up again; it may not be immediate or a joint venture to speak the love language of your partner, but if you find resistance about opening up or seeking help to better your relationships, there are ways to interpret the negativity from our partners to find out what their love language(s) is (are) and to start using those in our communication in order to get back to a place where our own love languages can be understood and expressed back to us.

Love is... complicated, complex, different for everyone, received differently by each individual, can be directed and expressed in many ways for many people...the list goes on.  Find your love language, find the love language of those you care about.  Help others to feel the love you give, and help them to know the best ways to communicate their love to you and then love can really be like "all of the quotes and poems and information you've ever heard or felt." 

You absolutely MUST read this!

...Must I, though?

I've often wondered about this when people tell me I have to do something:

...are we utilizing the correct vocabulary?  Do I really HAVE to or would you just prefer that I do?

While this is a latent question that only really surfaces when I hear someone ask "can I go to the bathroom" and my inner-English-teacher silently shouts "MAY YOU," I was blindsided by an article I clicked on accidentally earlier which discusses the difference between "should" and "must" (hence the title of this post).

I have more and more often questioned the things I am told (verbally or otherwise) that I SHOULD do.  There are conflicting messages, of course: societal pressures of what is "normal," my parents being my cheerleaders and telling me to "go for the gold" and "be whatever I want to be," and at the same time hoping that I choose something that works in society and that doesn't make me a stranger to it.

I think I'm torn.  I want the "should" because supposedly I should...right?  But the Must is the ever-constant tugging at me, making me defiant in the face of hoity-toity-ness and greed and hatred and evil and being unkind.  Even as I write, though, I don't necessarily believe that society or culture say that we should be THOSE things...so why do I feel so rebellious against them?  Maybe society says nothing at all about those things and to say anything at all is to be rebellious and to yield (FINALLY!) to our inner "Must."

I find myself hating "the nine to five"...I don't think I know a single human being who says they LOVE the nine to five.  What does this all MEAN?  That we all KNOW that we must not do it, but that we SHOULD?  Who said so?  Clearly no one I've ever spoken to about it.  Do you?  Do your friends or family?  Does anyone think we SHOULD do the nine to five?  If not, then how did it become the "should" that our inner "must" is rebelling against and why is it so hard to break free of?
One of my favorite parts of this article is where the author pulls a quote from the book she bases it on:

Must is different. Must is who we are, what we believe, and what we do when we are alone with our truest, most authentic self. It’s that which calls to us most deeply. It’s our convictions, our passions, our deepest held urges and desires — unavoidable, undeniable, and inexplicable. Unlike Should, Must doesn’t accept compromises.

Must is when we stop conforming to other people’s ideals and start connecting to our own — and this allows us to cultivate our full potential as individuals. To choose Must is to say yes to hard work and constant effort, to say yes to a journey without a road map or guarantees, and in so doing, to say yes to what Joseph Campbell called “the experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

Choosing Must is the greatest thing we can do with our lives.

...Just TRY and tell me that those words don't stir up the "Must" in you, anxious to explode into being, existence, life...just TRY to tell me you don't relate with every fiber as you read the words about your inner self.  I doubt that you can (I know that I can't) and yet it is quite likely that you are someone that is doing something you should...most of the time.  My hope for you, though, is that your should begins to meld with your must in such a way that your "must" DRIVES your "should."

I must travel the world because my inner self believes that is what I should do in order to fulfill my purpose and life on this planet for the brief time I am here!  Fulfilling our purpose is something society tells us we should do...this is a good combination of should and must that you can justify...

I must use my skills and passions to help others because it is the thing that MOST makes me feel alive and I should do it because it is good for society and for others.  "Must" is for me...the reason others give for my must-actions, in this case, is the "should."

In the end, you already know, what others say will not determine how well you live your life.  It will not determine if you are a good or a bad person, if you are accomplished or not.  If you do not do what you MUST, though...if you do not comply with the fibers of your being that beckon you away from the norm toward whatever your true calling is...then you will fail yourself...and THAT is the greatest failure of all.  So do what you must, and feel free to tell people that whatever their desire for your life is (from the outside perspective) - they should start using the correct vocabulary for it.

Inspired by The Crossroads of Should and Must.