I have been thinking about love lately.

I’ve never really thought about love before.

So, I guess I never knew about it.

I used to think that love is something that comes from romantic love and that it is only possible when I receive kindness from the other person.

I realized that the best way for me to grow as a human being and enjoy life was to learn to love without compensation.

I’m starting to know that it’s only recently.

It’s not just about romance to love.

My purpose until the day I die is to give love back to all the plants, animals, and the earth that surround me and continue to give me love.

However, it might be an easier way to learn love through romantic relationships, family, and friends. I think that I can learn a lot about this through my close people, family, and love.

In order to understand love in a simple way, I began to review my past experiences in love.

The thing is…

If I was truly in love with my partner, why did I stop enjoying the relationship and let it cool down?

If I really had a love for a person, I wondered why the relationship became less enjoyable and cooled down, or why I broke up with them or lost interest in them.

What was there was not really love, but only selfishness and ego.

Sometimes,

I couldn’t be with them because I got bored with my physical relationship with the other person.

And, the other person did something I didn’t like.

And, I disliked the other person because of a change in my environment.

It was all from my ego.

In the end, I thought that I didn’t care about the good or bad parts of the other person at all, only cared about me.

I had stayed with the women I had been with because I had feelings of love for them,

But I was convinced that it was a very immature love.

Perhaps a better way to describe it would be that I was only interested in myself to love them.

I was afraid that I would become a victim of betrayal.

I was afraid that if they didn’t love me back, I wouldn’t feel safe and I would feel like I had no value.

I would even think that there was no point in living.

Let’s stop living a life of just being thirsty for love.

Let’s make it a life where we can love others.

It requires courage to make the decision to love.

For me, the decision was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

However, I’ve been feeling refreshed and everything has become more enjoyable again now.

I bought a cactus and started to grow it in order to understand to love. I called her “Angels”.

When I feel anxious or afraid,

It’s because we want something in return.

The solution is to give something back to yourself.

For me, the best way to give back to me is through my own growth. Such as, I give back through a workout, reading, language study, guitar, fashion, and all the other things I love and enjoy growing up with.

There is a power in this that cancels out the feeling of begging someone to do something for me and thirsty.

Respect the things that you have a lot of good stuff.

I’m going to live my life to the fullest today, respecting myself for having so much, and looking forward to cultivating a little by little love.

Zen Jin