“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” Thomas Merton.

The time has come for a new and personal post. My mind seems to have spent much of the past 6 months blanketed in a haze of uncertainty and indecision. Combine that with the added influence of family conflict and health issues and I guess it would be fair to say I have been mentally and emotionally hibernating. But lying dormant has been this wellspring of curiosity about a fairly common and mysterious virtue: love. Recently, I have been perusing older journal entries and even blog posts and a type of self designed motif suddenly struck me when I came across the quote above.
The unvarnished truth is I am a quantifiable disaster at loving people the way they are in such an open an accepting manner. I like boundaries and rules and mutual respect. The older I get the the clearer it becomes that this is a child's fantasy I have yet to exorcise. And yet I struggle to accept the notion that in order to truly love others we imply an acceptance of how they may treat us no matter how injurious and disrespectful. When one opens one's self up to others  and becomes subject to their whims and capriciousness how far must one go to exemplify love and kindness? At what point does charity for others become more important than respect for self? How does one both love with total acceptance and maintain a sense of value for one's own needs? I will let you know if I ever find the answer....