For as long as I have lived, my understanding of what love is has constantly evolved. I believe many people don’t truly know what love is at all, or mistake it for the longing after an object of desire. There isn’t a single, absolute definition of love — unless we are speaking of absolute love itself. But most people cannot comprehend what absolute love is, because it’s impossible to truly understand until you have lived it yourself. Until then, any idea of love remains deeply subjective.
I believe, in some sense, this is the root of most human problems — no one really knows what love is. And even when we finally feel we know, there is still no certainty that we have truly grasped it.
Between us girls, I can say that I only discovered what love truly means for me when I was nearly forty. And it turned out to be nothing like what I had thought about love all the previous years of my life.
For me, love is a space of total acceptance that we create for the people we love — a space where they can be fully, completely themselves, with all their “flaws, tears, breakdowns, scandals, and moments of deception” — and know that it is safe. That we will see all of it not as shortcomings, but as “depths, mysteries, and unseen secrets” of their vast, beautiful soul.