Loving
Loving is a learning process. All
my life loving and to be loved appeared to occupy much of my time daytime and
nighttime. I hopefully and yearningly aspired to love and be love.
When I considered myself to be hopelessly in love, I was not really loving.
This love was merely attraction. However, I could justifiably consider an
object of love fascinating.
I found that true love has a cadence.
It is based upon a step by step process of self understanding and understanding
of others.
Because I must genuinely love myself
first before I can love another, some may call love selfish. Yet love is
selfless, since actual loving is a state of mind and not an emotion.
Love cannot truly be learned by education but only through experience. If
I say that I have discovered myself to be in love, I might have just been
attracted to another. Genuine love is not lost or relative. It is
based upon the principle of caring.
At the earliest age I recall, I was
hopeful of being in love. Yet, this was actually a self centered love or
attraction. To be actually loving, I would never say I was blindly in
love. However, I can be motivated to love or not to love depending
upon my openness to myself and others.
David C. Hakim
Rochester, Michigan
August 4,
2004