Love Is What Is Happening Here

This morning I asked myself a very small question with absolutely no chance of producing a small answer:

What is love?

Apparently my brain decided 8:00 in the morning was the perfect time to tackle one of humanity’s biggest philosophical questions.

Naturally.

But instead of getting some grand, mystical response, I started thinking about my actual life.

Love is my fiercely independent cat choosing, completely on her own terms, to climb up beside me.

Love is the way Chonkie looks at me.

Love is calling Deedle and having him jump into my lap.

Love is thinking about Jen, Ruby and Rose.

Love is listening to the animals.

Love is talking to Willow.

Love is tending the garden, caring for the land and caring for the animals.

Love is feeling the cool weather and noticing the wind.

Love is smiling when I hear the frog.

And somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn't really making a list of things I love.

I was noticing how love moves through my life.

It listens.

It tends.

It feeds.

It notices.

It receives.

It gives.

It trusts.

It opens.

And occasionally, apparently, it sheds all over the furniture.

The more I wrote, the more I realized that perhaps I have spent much of my life thinking about love as something we give to someone else. We love our families. We love our animals. We love our friends. We love the land.

But what about all the love coming the other direction?

The cat who chooses your lap.

The animal who looks into your eyes.

The wind on your face.

The frog calling from somewhere you can't even see.

The tree you have spoken to so many times that it no longer feels strange to say you're in relationship with a tree.

Okay, maybe it still sounds a little strange to some people.

I'm fine with that.

Lately I keep being shown that inhabiting my life more fully isn't about adding something to it.

It is about noticing what is already happening.

And this morning I realized that love is one of those things.

I don't have to go looking for it.

I don't have to earn it.

I don't have to create some extraordinary spiritual experience in order to find it.

Love is already here.

Sometimes love looks profound.

Sometimes love looks like an animal crawling into your lap.

Sometimes love is caring for the garden.

Sometimes love is allowing yourself to receive help.

Sometimes love is standing outside in the cool air and suddenly realizing you are ridiculously happy because a frog is making noise.

Love is everywhere.

But perhaps we have to become quiet enough to notice it.

What Love Is Teaching Me

Love is teaching me that it is not only something I give.

It is something I can receive.

That may be the harder lesson.

Caring comes naturally to me. I can feed the animals, tend the garden, help someone I love, care for the land and worry about approximately seventeen living beings before breakfast.

Receiving asks something different of me.

Receiving asks me to stop doing for a moment.

To allow.

To trust.

To notice.

To let something come toward me without immediately deciding what I should do with it.

And perhaps that is part of what stillness has been teaching me all along.

When I become still, I begin to notice how much of my life is already reaching toward me.

The animals.

The trees.

The land.

My family.

The wind.

Even an opinionated little cat who has apparently decided that sitting beside me is preferable to maintaining her reputation as a fiercely independent woman.

Love is not somewhere else.

Love is what is happening here.

And if I am part of this living world—if I am not separate from the animals, the land, the trees, the water and the people I love—then perhaps the final thing I wrote this morning isn't quite as outrageous as it might first sound:

I am love.

Not because I always get it right.

Not because I am endlessly patient, peaceful and spiritually enlightened.

That would be quite a plot twist.

But because I am part of the giving and receiving.

Part of the tending and being tended.

Part of the loving and being loved.

I am inside the exchange.

You May Be Wondering…

How do I notice more love in my own life?

Maybe don't look for the biggest example.

Look for the smallest one.

Who comes and sits beside you?

What makes you smile without thinking about it?

What do you lovingly tend?

Where do you feel yourself soften?

What sound makes you stop and listen?

What ordinary thing have you passed a hundred times without noticing that it may, in its own way, be part of your relationship with this life?

You don't need to manufacture gratitude.

You don't need to convince yourself that everything is wonderful.

Just notice.

Because perhaps love is not something we find.

Perhaps love is what we discover has been happening all around us once we become still enough to notice.

And every once in a while, love may even come with fur on it.

May you see the world through the eyes of love, remembering that we are all part of one living, sacred whole