Learning to Love. Understanding

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

 Understanding

Love cannot be understood. And yet, without understanding we cannot love.

‘Under-standing’ is that sustaining premise on which we ‘stand’. We take a ‘stance’ and fix a personal position, when we have a solid baseline on which to build thought-constructs and opinions.

I have never had ‘common sense’ or ‘good judgment’ because it requires keeping in check with reality and factual data. It has to be proved. I prefer trying to 'understand', expanding beyond the logical methodology of ‘knowing’ and exploring underlying subjective associations. . Understanding is flexible and adapts to interaction with feelings and emotions, not just to rationale. Without this buffering, relationships would break, with the daily clashing of differing ego’s.

However, understanding is not enough. Just the other day I found my lover´s reactions difficult to accept. They seemed to me, inexplicable. It is not about ‘justifying’ what we cannot accept.  I tried blaming myself, blaming him, blaming circumstances and yet no explanations held together enough, to make sense of what I saw as ‘senseless’ behavior. That’s when loving kicks in.

Let go. Don’t try to understand. Just love, in one of its forms: mercy, compassion, patience.

Love sets us free from judging in a binary right/wrong way, allowing us to differ and even reject our lover in anger, without affecting the quality of our loving. Loving cannot be bound to facts. Otherwise, our judgmental tendencies would invariably find fault with our lovers.

 Loving is a flow that breezes past thoughts. Thoughts may ‘rustle’ and ‘bustle’ and heave ‘hustle’, but love cannot be caught. It is fresh and cleanses the mind from nagging thoughts that demand precision and control. Love cannot be evaluated, measured, contained or limited to explanations. It just is. Experiencing love sets us free from  understanding even ourselves, releasing us from self-importance and  exigent expectations. Understanding helps, in dealing with the day-to-day rut of conflicting differences, but in no way can it circumscribe our loving.

Love is a decision. I may not ‘agree’; I may not ‘accept’ and I can draw my own inferences to try to ‘understand’ my lover. However, when we don't understand the inexplicable intricacies and complications of destiny, we can decide to accept it. To love is to understand with this inner enlightenment of ‘d’dignity’ (from lat. Igneo- flame).