Is it real, or is it an ideal to aspire to?

Are we only able to love our children unconditionally?

"What do you mean, we shouldn't be on the table?"

I remember yearning to be a mother.  I wanted to love and raise a child.  Was this a desire to give unconditional love?  Or was it a need that I expected  loving a child would fulfill - conditional?

Is unconditional love active or passive?  Is it a feeling we have, or is it something we do?

Can we only love those we know unconditionally, or is it possible to love everyone unconditionally as God does?

Is unconditional love, love regardless of what someone does, or is it a love that ignores what someone does? Can you love someone  if he has tortured or killed?

Is unconditional love, love without expectation?  Is it therefore unconditional love an abused woman feels for her abuser, or is that a desperate yearning to be loved and  that yearning to be loved  confused with love itself?

Are conditions in love really such a bad thing?   I mean we all have values.  Can we really love someone who’s moral values, for instance are completely different to our own?  And should we?

At work I asked some men what unconditional love was.  Interesting responses:

1. Unconditional love is  love where you would sacrifice your life for someone

2.  Love is a state of being that requires both people for it to occur, and when it is love that occurs, it just  is unconditional.

3.  Love without conditions!!!!

4.  I had a ferret once.  I really loved that ferret, but I hated what he did to rabbits, still loved the ferret though, that’s unconditional love.

5.  It’s a load of crap, whether we realise it or not we all have conditions and expectations.

6.  It depends on what your definition of love is.

What do you think?

]]> http://hotmiddlescence.com/unconditional-love-part-two/feed/ http://hotmiddlescence.com/unconditional-love-part-one/ http://hotmiddlescence.com/unconditional-love-part-one/#comments Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:24:16 +0000 brigit http://hotmiddlescence.com/?p=471 When my beautiful daughter left here, after her last visit,

she was going to Dubbo to the highly regarded Western Plains Zoo.

When she’d gone  I thought about zoo visits we’d  had when she was a child and decided to reminisce with a cup of tea and some photos.

hiding

There were many photos that stirred emotions.

all tuckered out and ready for a nap

bedding, some pots and pans and the dress up box - but the result -  look at her, how could I not love her?

There were quite a few photos of my daughter’s naughty moments.  They all brought a smile to my face.  Somehow, even through the mess she’d made I could always see my beautiful little darling that I loved….unconditionally.

That incredible feeling of awe and overwhelming love as I held her as a new born.  Her smell, the softness of her skin, the depth of her eyes.  This little stranger that I’d carried for nine months was finally in my arms, and I was loving her, this breathtakingly beautiful child more than I had ever loved before.

My daughter was a difficult baby.  Her first year was not easy.  She was allergic to just about everything.   There was much I couldn’t eat, because it would come through in my milk.  Her first vaccination, resulted in an emergency trip to the hospital, and it was decided that she shouldn’t  have any more vaccinations.  Someone walking past her with aftershave on would bring out a rash of hives.  She was often congested and I would listen for her breath at night.  This resulted in me being rather tired and scared, and at times I wondered how much more I could give.  But love seemed to be an endless stream.

As she grew, so did my love.  Even through the teenage years when love was often tested.  Times of her self importance, and arrogance, accompanied with snide, sarcastic remarks, that would make me bite my tongue, while being tempted to say “Go away, come back when you’ve grown up.”  But after the anger subsided;  there it was again - overwhelming love.

Now that she’s twenty, when she comes home, as she frequently does, I have moments of great pride in seeing the young woman she is becoming.  I also have moments of great frustration about what she isn’t doing and should be doing….according to me, but I love her as much if not more than ever, if that’s at all possible.

This great love,  a love I could never have imagined feeling, a love ever growing.   Is it really unconditional - love regardless of anything she does;  love without expectations?   No.   I think its more than that.

Over the last several months I have been very conscious of opportunity placed along the path of my middlescence journey.  Opportunity that perhaps in the past I would never have seen or just rejected.  There has been one particular opportunity that has re-appeared a few times.  I’ve considered it more than once, but each time decided not to go further.  It has come up again, so this time I’ve decided to give it my best shot.

I’ve been able to get hold of women’s clothing that I thought I’d sell at the markets, and this time I’ve made a commitment to the supplier.   When I went in to pick out my product, I became aware that not all sizes were available in the bras.  I was hoping for boulder holders! However there was nothing bigger than a 14D I’m afraid.  But the bathers go up to a 20 in some styles, so I was still happy.

Size 16, was $54.95, now $25

Bra $15, skirt $10

size 12, was $84.95, now $30

I investigated some midweek markets so that I wouldn’t have to take time off my regular job while I learned the pros and cons of market retail.   The market I chose for the first attempt was Preston’s Trash and Treasure Bazaar.   It didn’t demand any insurance cover,  and was inexpensive to hire a stall for the day.

What an eye opener it was!  This was a market  with more trash than treasure, on the outskirts of Sydney.  The shoppers were bargain hunters.  While visiting this market, doing my research, I noticed a lot of 2nd hand stuff, and noticed  a lack of new goods.

size 12 John Cavill, was $265 now $20

John Cavill top and skirt size 14 was $465, now $45 or $25 each

I thought with a hefty original price still on some of the items, the fact that they are new, and really are a bargain, that things could possibly go quite well.

On the other hand  the price I was charging could be all that was noticed and my stall would be a complete failure.

Well…..it was a complete failure.  In fact I’m about $30 in the red.   I sold two items.    People haggled other stall holders over items priced at $3.  One stall holder was selling stuff at 2 for a dollar.  This particular day a woman selling was new bras for $5 each or 3 for $10.

But!  I learned a lot.  This market is an amazing community of stall holders trying to make a quid.  The stall holder beside me, an older woman, was trying to make enough money to cover the cost of replacing a missing tooth.  I have a feeling they all had stories to tell.

The best thing to come out of my adventure was an interaction with a young boy.   He and his mother, stopped and looked at my goods.  His mother had bought him an aeroplane that he was toying with.  “New toy,” I asked.  He nodded, looking up at me through dark eyes, much to big for his little face, framed with  black curls shining in the sun.  With a look of embarrassment, he softly and shyly said, “Its a baby toy.”  It was a baby toy.  Probably 20 cents worth of second hand baby toy.   “Does it matter, you can still have a bit of fun with it.”  “It’s still a baby toy,” he insisted.  As mum went to walk away with her son, I said to her, looking at her son.  “You have an incredibly gorgeous son.”  The little boy walked backwards, mum tugging on his arm, looking at me.  Shyness vanishing in a beaming smile that made my heart miss a beat.   Best part of the market!  That little face will stay with me for ever.

A stall holder said to me, that you have to give the market more than one go.  People eventually know you are there and they will buy.  It’s a bit like cigarettes going up in price.  Smokers say they’ll stop, but they end up paying the price.  They need their smokes.  The woman was probably right.

After all, us girls need our boulder holders.

Minutes before this photo was taken, that beautiful calm the sunset imposes was missing, as the waves crashed almost recklessly upon the shore.

Then the transformation occurred.  Snippets of orange and pinks began to appear on the horizon.  My focus changed from the power of the ocean to the magic forming in the sky.

As nature painted her sunset,  her spectators were entranced.   Couples embraced or held hands, singles watched quietly, and children ‘wowed’ as the sky became the backdrop for her masterpiece.  It wasn’t just a visual masterpiece.  It was an emotional one that touched hearts.  It brought lovers closer together.  It confirmed the love of the ocean to the individual walker, runner,  or surfer.  Nature reached out with her sunset to touch us with peace, and love.

I no longer saw the threatening choppy ocean in its darkening colours.  I saw a beautiful sunset bestowing a loving calm.  Feeling enriched by the experience I left before the light faded, and the roar of the ocean became obvious again.

With the ocean and the river as with love and life, change is inevitable.

The river is still, the river flows.  On its journey to the ocean, there are rapids and there are billabongs, just as in love and life there is calm and there is storm.    Love empowers us.  We feel complete, invincible, protective.  Then the rapids come and we feel threatened.  We retreat, or we cling for dear life, as control is no longer ours.

If only I could I live my  life feeling and bestowing that loving calm of a sunset to all that I touched. To the rapids,  to the choppy, and the storms in my life.  Is that what unconditional love is?  If it is, am I truly capable of unconditional love?

Is love an innate emotion that we can choose to either express or repress,  deny like anger or other forms of emotional pain for instance?  Are we better off living life liking, rather than loving?  Can we live life liking, rather than loving?

Is there really such a thing as unconditional love?

What about romantic love?  Why are there so many middle aged divorced people on  dating sites like RSVP,  that have been there for years, searching for love yet can’t find it, when there are so many people on these sites supposedly looking for the same thing?   Why is it that my parents and others like them are still in love in their 80’s?  Why is it that 40% of marriages are expected to end in divorce - and higher for 2nd marriages.    Is it really love that people are looking for?  Is it really with love that people are living?

In my youth I found Sydney an invigorating city.  Full of beauty and life.  A rich tapestry of cultures, food and entertainment.

With each visit to Sydney, I experience an inner recognition of ‘home.’   I spent my youth and young adulthood there.  But now in middlescence, I’m torn between that recognition and its sense of reconnecting to what is almost a lost comfort, a part of my youth I guess, and a yearning  for something deeper, something quieter, more peaceful as maturity stakes its claim.  At 52 I find Sydney beautiful, loud and far too busy.   Even the ocean crashed loudly upon the shore, taking me back to a point in my childhood where the history of years of tidal wave dreams began.

Standing on those rocks as the ocean swelled, I felt the movement of the ebb and flow, I felt the sound, I felt the ocean’s overwhelming vastness and power.  I once read in a dream analysis book, that tidal wave dreams mean emotional overwhelm, and I wondered what it was  all those years ago in my childhood, that triggered those dreams.  Perhaps it was the journey on the ship from Germany to Australia.  Perhaps it was my father ‘whooshing’ me through the waves….

While in Sydney, a girlfriend and I stayed in a house designed by Walter Burley Griffin, the architect who designed Australia’s capital city Canberra.  The owner of the house was overseas and suggested we stay while we were in Sydney.

We arrived at the house after an active and long day at around 11.30 pm.  In unfamiliar territory we used our mobile phones as torches to locate the hidden front door key and the key hole in the door, then to find internal light switches;  non of which worked!

Back outside again with our mobile phones as torches, we found the fuse box, that revealed a blown fuse, two fuses, and one socket.  All too much for tired mere females.

So my head hit my pillow in a bedroom, seen only through the light of my mobile phone, in a house totally unfamiliar.

As I drifted to sleep I heard the gentle tingling of wind chimes somewhere close by and thought “how lovely,” until I was woken  every time a breeze blew, lunging for my mobile phone, then realizing the sound wasn’t my phone, but the wind chimes.

I tossed and turned through the night with thoughts about tidal waves, city life, country life.  Could I ever live in Sydney again?   Sydney’s mild winter compared to the Highland’s.  How much I loved the warmth.   My beautiful daughter.  How much I loved her, yet how annoying she could be.  Love in all its forms;  unconditional love, love of mother and child, romantic love, and love of nature.

The morning revealed a cosy comfortable home, with skylights and windows allowing the the outdoors in.  The garden was lush with plants I missed in the Southern Highlands.  Frangipanis beginning to shoot new growth.  Magnolias almost ready to blossom, and of course the beautiful Jacarandas.

My restless night was not only rewarded by the morning’s daylight revelation, but by thoughts still lingering, still clear, about issues that begged for attention while I yearned for sleep in a foreign place.

A visit to somewhere outside of my comfort zone, has created a new vision, a stamina.  I yearn for springtime warmth, for it’s colours and scents.  for its freshness of life, and I will seek out the sun and bask in its warmth, knowing that not too far from home spring is already asserting its imminence.

Infinite in depth and strength

Forever mysterious,

entrancing,

beckoning

The soul of life

Love like a river flows

….Been thinking a lot about love lately;  its lure to continually participate.  Looking into this river as the day drew to a close, its stillness reflected life,  and I fell in love all over again.  I’m not even sure what with.  Was it the river, was it the reflection in the river, was it life, was it the stillness and calm?

Even in our darkest times, after the rain has come, and life, like mud, becomes dense and cold, love quietly sits, waiting for that recognition of the gentle sway of its flow deep within us.

As love is touched in recognition, the ripple effect is felt though bodies, our hearts, our souls, and we are awakened with a ‘bing.’   We thank god for the love we have, as we jump into the waters of the mystery of love, be that romantic love, or the love of a child, or in my case, on that bridge over the river, a recognition that love refuses to die.

Not only is Talon an observer and photographer of all things beautiful in nature and in her own back yard, she is also an inspiring writer.  Her words are vivid in imagery:

Some things are just beautiful…

Talon’s words are a constant reminder of what’s important in life, and at times are deeply moving as in her post:  The Go to Guy:  http://talonted.blogspot.com/2009/06/go-to-guy.html

A visit to Talonted is like opening special book.  Make yourself a good cup of coffee, and give yourself a moment to enjoy:  http://talonted.blogspot.com/

These awards, besides being first and foremost a recognition of achievement,  are basically a networking method that is probably quite successful.  It is a way of motivating the acceptor of an award to give the award to other bloggers, thereby promoting other blogs that the writer’s readers may not have come across yet.  Nothing wrong with that.  There are some great bogs out there, and the award system is one way of coming across them.  This particular award also requires the revelation of 7 things about one self.  Nothing particularly wrong with that either.  I guess I just find accepting something that obligates me to do something somehow jarring.  I’d rather reveal freely.  I’d rather promote other blogs freely.  Yet I haven’t.  I’m too busy working on my own stuff, and following the blogs I consistently go to because they are just wonderful.

So  although I’m extremely delighted and honoured to be thought of I’m going to say no to the Kreativ Blog Award.  Instead I’m going to make a committment to promoting a blog I think is great on a regular basis….This could be fun.

Lately there’s been a little chaos in my life.   It seems to have come with the decision to widen my depth of field, just a tad, to take the next step, in living my life after sheltering in my tunnel:  http://hotmiddlescence.com/there-is-a-crack-in-everything-thats-how-the-light-gets-in/

I have decided to start studying again, basically thereby broadening my opportunities in the work field.   This means being organised enough to include study time.  Not that hard!  Then why is it that  I suddenly see an array of things demanding attention and creating chaos!

My other other web site:  http://Southernhighlandsentertainment.com needed updating, and still needs more follow up work, to generate some income.  I’ve had to really have a long hard think about how to make this site start paying in some way.  And now is the time to send out emails, and make some phone calls.

The house, again looks as though it needs a spring clean.  but It’s winter for heaven’s sake!

Someone suggested putting a book together with photos, and stuff I’ve written, and I think I have enough material to do it.

Then of course there’s study….

So I do a bit of everything.  Not good for a detail person.  Chaos!

Chaos

My darling daughter, who has recently torn a ligament in her thumb, making  it impossible for her to work in hospitality for the moment, recently decided to join the police force and has started a bridging course to help get her get in.   This means while she is studying, she is eligible for the youth allowance, which she has chosen to take advantage of.  With this little allowance, she has been able to flit between home and Sydney. She’s been staying with friends, partying, taking lots of rather good photos in the city, and having a great time.

I just wish she was working.  She has applied for some work in Sydney, in positions where her plaster cast won’t be an issue.  I have my fingers crossed.   She comes home every four or five days,  and creates her own little bit of chaos by upsetting any form of routine I’ve managed to establish, to do her laundry, use the computer for her assignments, rely on some home cooked food, then me, to run her back to the station to catch a train back to Sydney.

When she’s away, I miss her terribly and am beginning to get a bit of a yearning for love again…..Thinking a lot about love lately.

But first, “Order!  she cried.   It’s time to prioritise.  It’s time to make a list.  It’s time for some time management.   Oh, what fun.