Love is Your Superpower

Don’t waste it

“I don’t know if any of us know much about love. We just feel it when we feel it.” — the words of Jean Milburn in Sex Education.

Why do we spend so much time analysing love? Focusing on how to ‘get it right’, expressing it in the perfect way, and not f*cking it up?

I believe that my own inability to understand the basic fact that love just is, beyond the human flaws in how we express ourselves, and do what is ‘right’, was one of the reasons I walked fatally into a disastrous relationship.

However, that experience taught me some valuable lessons. Lessons we can only truly understand for ourselves but are worth sharing nonetheless. Because perhaps you can relate to the uncertainties and insecurities that can come with loving another, and the act of journeying beyond them.

Words are powerful

With our words, we have the ability to make someone feel really good about themselves, or really shit.

Having been on the receiving end of some pretty nasty verbal streams at times, I don’t buy the concept that:

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

On the contrary, words can play over and over in your head and cause the same pain time and time again.

OR…

You can use words to lift someone up. You can use words to lift everyone you meet if you want to.

And, even better, lifting others makes us feel really good!

Lifting others with our words makes people believe in themselves and their own innate goodness, and enhances our own self-love. And, in the beautiful, circular way that love works, when we love ourselves, it’s easy to love others and treat them with genuine kindness and care.

Once quite a shy person around strangers, and very reserved about expressing emotions or anything along the lines of personal connection, I realised that was holding me back. Learning to be free with my words, my encouragement of others, and my appreciation and love for them, brought a lot more love and connection into my life.

Be soft, caring, and limitlessly generous with your words.

Gesture is powerful

Gestures are the simplest way for someone to sense the true feelings of another.

We are intuitive beings and, beneath any exterior, we can see and feel the genuine emotion that drives certain gestures.

Positive gestures can be anything from paying for coffee for someone whom you care about, or holding their hand as you help them up a difficult step, to giving them the physical and emotional space to do the things that are important to them without expectation. They are genuine signs that you care without condition.

When we, the one offering gestures to another, do so with pure selflessness, and their happiness as our goal, they know it. With gesture, we invite the target of our love to also receive with the same open-heartedness.

The power of silence

The truth is what lies in the silence between words and gestures.

Real love — love that we have for our friends, family, and significant other — does not need a medium of communication for that love to be shared and received. Beyond physical and verbal expression is the deep knowing that you are rooting for the long-term happiness and well-being of the object of your love.

Non-attachment, trust and unconditional belief in another. Giving without expectation of reciprocation. None of this needs to be spoken. When love is there, pure and true, none of this needs to be said.

Intuitive communication is a natural side-effect of this purity of love.

But none of us is perfect. We are human, and sometimes insecurities arise or patience wears thin. Social expectations, demands at work, or by family, can all play havoc with our ability to dwell peacefully in the potential magnificence of a love bond.

But, when we stop for just a moment and move these stresses and emotions aside to allow space for the silence, we can recognise the unspoken vibrations of love in another, despite the trials of life.

This is where love can rise strong.

Being entwined in a dark and toxic relationship made me realised the preciousness of relationships and people, the pointlessness in wasting our lives concerned with superficial vanities, insecurities and petty niggles with the people in our lives.

I realised what a gift it is to truly be loved, and how important it is to recognise that and treasure it and give in abundance to nurture those relationships.

The experience grew me as a person, strengthened me within, and taught me a great many things. Most especially that…

Our own ability to love is the greatest superpower we can possess.

If you ever feel like the act of loving someone is beating you down, ask yourself this:

Are these words lifting me or cutting me down? Are the gestures nourishing me or sucking me of the will to keep going? And is there the silence, the gaps between communication, where love just keeps flowing?

Love never needs to break you down. On the contrary, it is your superpower.

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