Something to consider

I've been having a recurring thought this past week. That thought revolves around our belief in unconditional love. Does that really exist?

Some might argue that it does exist, take a child, healthy or sick, and its mother will care for it regardless. Others might say, take adopted children, their foster families took them in and provide for them plenty of love on a daily basis. Parents love their kids, kids love their parents, friends love each other, siblings love each other. However, there is always a catch. Love does not come with no strings attached.

Personally, I don't think there is such a thing as unconditional love. There is love/hate depending on the circumstances, there is prejudiced love, jealous love, old love, new love and just plain lust. Whatever form it takes, love can be anything and everything but unconditional it is not.

We love someone as long as they adhere to our norms and beliefs, if someone is different, alarm bells go off and we stand there judging. Another factor in this problem just revealed itself, the relationship between love and acceptance. An example: One of my good friends in uni was gay. However, he was in the closet because he feared what the outcome will be if his parents found out. People from the west might not see this as a major problem, but to him, an Arab guy, it was. Unconditional love would state that his parents will accept him no matter what he chooses to love or do- no pun intended. However, they wouldn't or the couldn't or they chose juts not to.

Why are humans so arrogant to think that they have any right to judge others or to think themselves better than others? We all go through life in a relatively similar pattern. Yes, some have it easier than others, but we all have to work to get or keep what we already have. We have all love and lost, we have all laughed and grieved, and we all had to face reality at one point in life.

Unconditional love means just that, loving someone other than yourself no matter what they do/say/feel/think/believe/look like. In order to love unconditionally, you have to let go, what is yours will always come back. You can not have walls built and expect someone to stay within them, as a prisoner confirming to your values. One should demolish those walls and instead, build a bridge that is easily accessible. Without that bridge, love will never be given unconditionally, nor received that way.

We humans are always looking for love and acceptance, and we know how it feels to be an outcast, yet given the chance we inflict those same standards and laws on others and expect them to adhere to them. What sad creatures we are, and what a long way we have to travel before we can honestly say that what connects us all isn't the fact that we are all humans, but more importantly it is our humanity, empathy, compassion and understanding. When that happens we will finally be able to connect freely with one another, we will be able to live in relative peace and harmony and hatred will hopefully be an emotion long forgotten. We will no longer judge differences but embrace the diversity they bring, we will not flee from that which we might to agree with, but accept that it is what it is, and that we should live and let live.

I'm tired of all the thinking that went into this so I will end it here for now.

Baaaaaaaaaaa.