What is unconditional love?

Hello, Google…

Natch!  The first entry is the kudzu-like Wiki.  The next one is a movie listing about a woman who’s trying to recover after her husband leaves her.

Okay, forget Google, Wiki or IMDB.  Here’s what I think.  I think that  unconditional love is like faith in a higher power.  First, you need to conceive consciously that it may exist.  It’s easier to do this if you start out expecting to be abandoned.  See, if you don’t have the expectation of loss at your core, there’s no reason to ever consciously consider the opposite.  It’s like taking your arm or toes for granted.  I’ve got an arm and toes, so I don’t think about them.  I do think about my swollen ankles a lot lately, but that’s different.

Then you need to experience love.  What kind doesn’t matter as long as it’s deep and life-altering.

Then you need to freak out because, at your core, you expect to loose that love.  You understand that whether you continue to be loved or not is a direct result of the good you do, how you act or what you accomplish.  And conversely, when you screw up, the assumption is that it will be gone.

The pressure!

Then someone tells me about unconditional love.  Right, I say.  I believe in fairies, too.  (Except, I kind of do believe in the concept of fairies of a sort… the Fairie Godmotherz sort….)

(Yes, I realize I changed to the 1st person.)

I listen as though this person I thought I knew is speaking Klingon.  It’s not only foreign, it’s made up.  He’s using words that I’ve heard before, but not in these combinations.

So, now I’m pondering this foreign, Star Trek-like concept.  Does unconditional love exist?  Who the hell invented it?  Is there a patent?  Can you get it in bulk?  It’s mighty attractive but I may need to get a second mortgage to afford it.

Significantly,

Susan Scot Fry

Update… I believe unconditional love exists and that there is absolutely nothing mystical about it.  I believe that it is a chemical fact of life.  I believe that, like religion, it has gotten a bad rap because of our human attempt to explain it in the simplest terms.