On Love, the Unconditional Kind

A topic that comes up frequently during coaching sessions is love.  We toss the concept around regularly; we love people, we love our pets, we love our favorite foods, etc., yet when I inquire into what “love” means to clients or within myself I am often met with an initial silence, followed by “Well, there are all different types of love.  Which one do you want my meaning for?” The one I am interested in exploring now is “unconditional love”, known as agape in Greek.

 

Agápe (ἀγάπη agápē^[1]) means “love” (unconditional love) in modern day Greek, such as in the term s’agapo (Σ’αγαπώ), which means “I love you”. In Ancient Greek, it often refers to a general affection or deeper sense of “true love” rather than the attraction suggested by “eros“. Agape is used in the biblical passage known as the “love chapter”, 1 Corinthians 13, and is described there and throughout the New Testament as sacrificial love. Agape is also used in ancient texts to denote feelings for a good meal, one’s children, and the feelings for a spouse. It can be described as the feeling of being content or holding one in high regard.[1]

 

Unconditional love doesn’t play favorites.  While it may prefer certain outcomes it is not attached.  It accepts people and situations as they are and as they aren’t while holding firm to the internal values at our core.

 

In 2008 while in the hospital prior to open heart surgery I had the honor of rooming with an African American woman in her mid sixties.  She was the mother of a thirty-something man, employed, happily married and co-parenting his two children.  At different times during his late teens and early twenties he was incarcerated for petty theft, a drug user and a heroin addict.  She told me that the most important act parents can make for their children is to always believe in them – believe in their ability to transcend their pain and suffering and their joy and pleasure and learn from the choices they make and the experiences they’re living.  She was speaking of unconditional love, accepting and honoring another’s path, even if it diverges vastly from our own.  Unconditional love is continuing to love through pleasure and pain.  It is continuing to love whether the object of our love is alive or dead.

 

At a funeral last week, for a thirty-one year old woman, beloved daughter, wife, and friend to many, the pastor spoke of love being weaker than death in that love can not keep people alive when it is time for them to depart yet it is longer than death.  It transcends the life/death dichotomy.  Unconditional love transcends the condition of life.

 

Unconditional love begins at home.  It begins with practicing accepting and loving ourselves; at the level of education we’ve achieved, the weight and level of fitness we are, the amount of money we generate, the choices we’ve made that have damaged or strengthened ourselves and others, what we excel at and what we don’t, and with the families we were born into and have created.  It includes honoring our path, as windy and unpredictable as it may feel, and being willing to seed and weed while we walk.

 

Unconditional love does not mean that we are stuck with our present experiences or that we can’t evolve and change ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in.  It doesn’t mean that we can’t fiercely advocate for what we deeply hold to be important and sacred.

 

It does mean that we assume responsibility for identifying and meeting our needs and cease to blame others if we are living in such a way that our needs are not being met.  It means that if we feel out of integrity we find our way back, and support others to do the same.  It means we allow ourselves and others to experience the natural consequences of our actions and let go of attempting to control others for the sake of feeling a false security.  It means we live beyond that place of judgment that we are all so familiar with and hold true to our values, letting of right/wrong, good/bad, should/shouldn’t thinking.  It means we stay with “what is” in the present and “what we’re committed to” now and for the future we are living into, regardless if we ever experience it fully manifest or not.

 

Loving unconditionally is ultimately believing and honoring the deep integrity in ourselves and each other, no matter what actions are taken – even if those actions result in removing ourselves from situations that are unsupportive of our or another’s well being.  Unconditional love is not a formula for a storybook life.  It is a way we can choose to become for an exceptionally deep, creative and rewarding life, illuminated by a rainbow of relationships, experiences, and emotions.

Maybe what we sacrifice in that New Testament definition of unconditional love is our ideas of duality and limitation.

What meaning do you give love? May you experience a depth of capacity from your inquiry.