Love (Un)Conditional

Unconditional love is known as affection without any limitations or love without conditions. All human beings are capable of giving and receiving such love every day in every way. We don’t have to look very far to find examples of such a blessed capability, most likely we can think of people, be it parents, family members or close friends that demonstrate unconditional love within their families, communities or through their charitable work. Additionally, there are well-known individuals that are said to have exemplified or advocated for unconditional love such as Jesus of Nazareth (embodied unconditional love), Martin Luther King Jr. (advocate for love, justice and equality in the Civil Rights Movement), Mother Teresa (exemplified love through serving the poor and vulnerable), Rumi (sufi mystic and poet emphasizing love and spiritual connection), and Louise Hay (author speaking about self-love and acceptance) and many more.

Can you imagine our society once we relearn to love the Self (our inner person), each other and the world unconditionally? The peace, joy, equality and power that a world based on love could have? It’s a beautiful place that can be real if we just remember to love. Over generations, our species has focused on our differences, the superficial… be it colour, race, class, language, belief system, or nationality. Why not take a deeper view of ourselves and others and see the similarities among us, the connectedness, the shared humanity? Whether we realize it consciously or not, we are a connected species and there is a shared ‘energy’ between all of us that we are only now learning about through science. One example is research on interpersonal neural synchronization, which finds that brain activity can align when we converse or share an experience with others. Being ‘on the same wavelength’ may be more than a figure of speech. Most belief systems have encouraged community celebrations to promote this collaborative energy. On the positive side, imagine sharing feelings of love and joy with others. When humanity is celebrating, we all feel great and have energy even if we don’t know why. When humanity chooses love, life seems that much better, the world seems that much better. On the flip side, we don’t need to analyze it but we're sure everyone can think of those examples too, where groupthink or herd mentality led to less positivity. The movie Tomorrowland painted a realistic picture of what shared negativity can do to a society and the world.

Why aren't we already living by love today? It could be for many reasons such as believing life is the same as when we were less evolved, survival of the fittest, us versus them, epic righteous battles between good (us) and evil (them), living for profit, power, or control. It is this writer's belief that the collective and snowballing trauma over the generations, things that we thought helped us to survive, were actually the things that held us back from truly thriving. Great leaders knew this and advocated for peace, humility, openness, love.

We're at the cusp of our evolution, the challenge to all of us is to CHOOSE LOVE, every second of every day, again and again until we are all on the same wavelength. This is entirely possible within our lifetime, within the year, within the month. Random acts of kindness, saying hello to strangers, turning the other cheek, acknowledging and understanding those that are different or hurtful to us. If you are a spiritual person, I challenge you to read Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch for a world-flipping view of our ‘purpose’ on earth (spoiler alert: it has everything to do with experiences and the greatest experience of all is to love every blessed experience, thing and person unconditionally). Many faith traditions encourage loving others unconditionally. For a story of choosing peace after loss, read I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey by Dr. Izzeldin Abulaish, a bittersweet story of a father’s plea for peace and love.

This necessary evolution needs to be performed by all of us, every second of every day. Ask yourself, what can I do in this ever present moment to exemplify unconditional love?

If you have a story or insights on your experience living and loving unconditionally, please email us and, with your permission, we may share it anonymously.