Love in all its forms
Cara, circa. 1974
By Cara Chang Mutert
Talking about love has never been a strong suit of mine. Having suppressed my emotions best as I could most of my life, love was not the exception. When we talk about love, most often it’s associated with romantic love. The kind that we believe will sweep us off our feet into a dreamlike nirvana with a partner that will carry us into an idyllic lifetime of hallmark moments, flowers, chocolate, and sultry nights.
But reality is, love is so much more than that. Sure, there is romantic love that we see glorified in movies, media and fairytales that most often present us with outlandish expectations and set us up for recurring disappointment. But real love is that which we felt early on in life and have memories from when we were young. Whether it was the generous love from your mother, the protective love from your father, the soothing love from a grandmother, the patient love from a grandfather, the playful love of a sibling, the kindred understanding of a best friend, or the unconditional love from a first pet, these are all examples of love that have informed our experience of what love feels like.
The pandemic has taught us a lot about what love means. While love has been tested either due to prolonged close quarters and/or agonizing separation, this past year has reinforced the power and importance of familial love. Our children define what love is. Our parents remain our first understanding of being loved. We’ve learned that our partner is not only our best friend and companion, but key to maintaining a healthy partnership also requires a little space. On the flip side, we’ve also learned that despite distance and separation, relationships and love among dear and true friends can withstand time apart.
Love, however, is even more expansive than both the comforting kind we learned about early in life, the passionate kind we romanticize, or the kind we share with family and friends who we hold so dear. In yoga, we discover that love can also be experienced universally. It’s the kind of love that we share as we move through the common experience of humanity. The kind of love that we often forget about, but then remember during particularly difficult times and world crises. It’s the ache we feel when others we don’t even know are suffering and there is little we can do to change it. It’s the kind of love you feel after a good yoga class. It’s an energetic exchange that occurs when you open yourself up to feeling beyond your mind and experience the truth of the moment.
In addition to the love we can feel far beyond ourselves, there’s also the love we need to learn to acknowledge and express toward ourselves. For many of us, recognizing the need for self-love is often the hardest kind of love to traverse and accept. While giving love to others is often easy, and receiving love can sometimes be more slippery, to acknowledge that you need to, in fact, you must love yourself is the Mt. Everest of love. Learning to love yourself is an uphill and ongoing climb that few will admit to, but most will attest to having some familiarity. I will admit, in my experience, the trek is long, arduous and a continuous work in progress of which I have not yet reached the summit.
But as the late yoga master Pattabhi Jois said, “Practice. Practice. Practice. All is coming…” So on this Valentine’s day, let’s collectively work together to open our hearts. To not only continue to love those who are most important to us, but also extend compassion, kindness, and tolerance universally to those we may not even know. And last but definitely not least, to remember that you are worthy of receiving love, and to start right here, right now, by practicing to love yourself fully and completely just as you are.