When Love Falls Short of All We Need.
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I remember breaking down in tears one day in mid-December. I was lonely, feeling rejected, unseen, unheard, unacknowledged, and undervalued. I felt invisible.
All I could think was “I want to be loved, I want to be loved, please… just let me be loved.”
Then I found the love I pleaded for. I found it in a foreign land I had only dreamed of visiting, at a time when I had accepted it wasn’t going to happen for me. But I found it, and I sank into it. I cherished it, nurtured it, believed in it, and thanked God for it. I gave myself over to it, this love that felt like an absolute gift. It was a beautiful reward for the pain and the hard work, a place to come home to and rest.
It turned out that to be loved was not enough. When the butterflies settled and passion began to subside, I realized it wasn’t love I craved; instead, it was a desire to be understood: to have another human see me, hear me, and acknowledge the place I held in the world.
Previous to this revelation, there was no distinction in my mind between love and understanding. They were the same, and needed each other to exist. I failed to see that love and understanding are not intrinsically bound. They exist in relationship to each other, but are certainly not interwoven.
Love without understanding exists, and this is where love is not enough. To have love without understanding is to have misguided care. It is well-meaning care, but it is care that exists without true context, therefore open to passivity.
It’s easy to practice love without understanding and maintain a comfortable distance. It becomes easy to exist without the accountability and ownership of paying attention to what is being presented. Love without understanding doesn’t require us to ask questions, to admit our shortcomings, or to recognize the variations of our individual experiences.
To practice understanding, we are required to acknowledge our bias. We must ask questions of those with different experiences, we must listen to the information they present, and we must be willing to tolerate it when it may contradict what we believe about ourselves. To tolerate the variation does not invalidate either experience; on the contrary, it allows for both sides to become more visible.
We must become willing to invite others to take up space, and know that in no way does it diminish our own.
It is misunderstood and unacknowledged fear that serves as fuel for hate. By allowing our fears to exist without understanding, we continue to support the cycle of hate. But through rigorous inquiry into fear (both our own and of others), we dismantle the power of hate. Fear becomes soothed when it feels understood, and hate dissolves when fear is diminished.
Love free of understanding is not the antidote to hate, because it doesn’t demand the practitioner to show up. But rigorous understanding? That’s the way we stand up to fear, and the way we begin to dismantle hate.
This rigorous inquiry is the key: ask what your opponent fears, make sure you hear why the fear exists, understand the how and why of it’ presence, and create the space for it to exist in the open. Then practice love by doing your best to act in a way that helps eradicate this fear, rather than continue to prove its validity.
Love will fall short of being all we need, but love sprung from understanding of hate might be a potent start.
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Kelsie Silva-Neto is a traveling Yoga teacher on a global adventure to rediscover her buried self. She is sharing this journey wholeheartedly and openly, in hopes of empowering others to share their own — free of judgment, shame, and fear. You can follow her adventure via her blog or connect via email.
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