That post about love

I've been thinking a lot about love. And more specifically, I've been thinking about loving a lot. I've also been thinking about how messed up perceptions of love are, why and how we make connections with people, and what makes us empathetic. With that being said, if you think this is a post wherein I express all things concerning my "love life" (or extreme lack thereof), think again. I'm getting at a whole different thing.

"Love is a symbol of eternity.  It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end." - Unknown

Day to day, we trek around with a foggy perception of what love really is. I know I do that. I mean, let's be real here; when you get on Facebook or watch a movie or whatever, is love really portrayed as "a symbol of eternity"? No! When you get on Facebook or watch a movie you're probably just reminded that love is something two people experience when they're obsessed with each other. Perhaps you're reminded that you have a lack of "love" in your life. Worst of all, love is often portrayed as a complicated emotion that never works out. Something that always ends in disaster. 

Love is not exclusively for "relationships". Love is not Noah and Allie from The Notebook or Jack and Rose from Titanic. Love isn't even Nutella and strawberries on a Sunday, because love never was, nor will it ever be, a thing.

Love is a mother by the bedside of her sick child. Love is a smile. Love is late night conversations with your best friend about things that really matter.  Love is a dad and daughter dancing around a living room. Love is the service you pair with emotion. Love is connection. Love is empathy. Love is a language--a language every person on this planet is fluent in.

Connection. I adore what my fabulous mentor Angela Baker said about it: "We are summoned to make meaningful connections with people every day; we can either shun it, or embrace it." For me, this ranges between the lady I make awkward eye contact with at the grocery store to my little sister asking me to take time out my busy schedule to spend time with her. It's what we choose to do with these "summons" that determine whether we're loving and living, or chopping the invisible strings that bead humankind together into one beautiful strand of spiritual pearls.

Empathy. Your mirror neurons fire in your brain when you see an action being performed, and psychologically you feel you are performing that same action. Chase scenes in movies draw you to the edge of your seat and seeing couples hold hands makes you feel a little in-love yourself. That is empathy. To look at someone and feel sympathy. To pair action to that sympathy. Empathy is looking into the faces of people from all over the world and knowing that they are free and beautiful people. Empathy is love. It is when we turn our empathy down that we stop truly loving.

Love is a language. We all speak it, even though we speak it in different accents. We show affection in different ways. But there are ways that we universally convey the language of love. There are little actions that we connect and empathize with no matter where we are or who we're with. Like smiling. See?

This picture probably made you connect, feel, and it is quite probable that it made you smile yourself. 

I feel that it's super important that I work harder to be the lover I've always wanted to be. Because I am not a perfect lover; I will admit to getting this close to punching a grand total of like, 19 people in the past 24 hours.

We must clear our visions of what love really is, embrace connection, envelope ourselves in empathetic thinking and scream our love languages to the world. I really believe that when we do, incredible things will happen in the world.

That's my spill today.
With love,
Julia

Post Script -  most of what I know about empathy I learned from my absolutely incredible Geography and World Events mentor, Adam Hailstone. Anyone who has not heard his lectures, I pity them greatly. But he directed me to a fantastic book that has to do a lot with empathy and psychology. "The Social Animal" by David Brooks. You'll want to read it, it's super thought provoking. And if you're lazy and don't feel like reading it, here is his TED talk to kinda compensate: http://www.ted.com/talks/david_brooks_the_social_animal.html