How to love

The more I meditate, the more my idea of love evolves. I believe it has grown significantly healthier since my practice became more serious a few years ago. I’ve learned from numerous false assumptions about the idea of love and have tried to develop a more thoughtful and empathetic way of loving. I’ve also made and learned from a lot of mistakes.
It’s easy to see the world as ‘out there’, as something that is not you. The reality is different, though. You are intertwined with the world in millions of little ways. Most of these connections are unapparent. If we thought about them constantly, we would go crazy. There’s no need to think about them. But recognizing the relationship between ‘you’ and ‘the world’ helps you shorten the distance between ‘self’ and ‘other’. Over time, when you see yourself as part of the fabric of the world, you feel less alienated from others. Recognizing your faults as ‘not your fault’, you can make peace with them, love yourself, and subsequently love other people despite their faults.
In recognizing myself as part of the fabric of the world, I become less narcissistic. My obsessive individualism fades a bit. I am not necessarily a special snowflake, nor am I free to do whatever I want if I want to live a happy life. If I want to respect the wholeness of the universe, I must follow certain guidelines. In respecting these guidelines, like not harming others, I respect myself. If I only respect myself, I neglect the guidelines at the expense of others, which ends up hurting me too.
This is why it is important to cultivate self-respect. When you respect yourself, you can be kind to yourself and others. You can love without need or expectation. This frees up a lot of energy that can then be spent loving yourself and others more fully.
When we attach too many selfish expectations to love, we become precisely what we don’t want. This doesn’t mean we should let others step all over us or violate our basic principles.
It just means we should not expect the world to conform to our every wish. Similarly, love is never perfect. If we expect perfection from ourselves or others, we will end every interaction in tears and fury. When we accept imperfection, love becomes more accessible.
This way of thinking is refreshing to me because my generation is very selfish with their loving. We learned from culture to be shallow, dramatic and selfish. Millennials are having less sex than any generation precisely because they are more hesitant to commit to devoted, loving relationships. The supreme irony of narcissism— when you want to have your cake and eat it to, you are often denied both options. When you want it all, you get nothing. When we are too selfish about love, we spoil it for ourselves, precisely because real love becomes impossible when it is selfish.
The key to a healthy idea of love is to be kind to yourself. Meditate and be honest with yourself about who you are. Once you know who you are, you can make peace with yourself and love yourself. When you love yourself, you can extend this love healthily to others who are in the same healthy state. Many people skip this step. They require love from others that they are incapable of giving themselves, and they create massive conflicts and heartbreaks.
Finally, we should not be scared to avoid commitments and sacrifices just because they can hurt us. Getting hurt in love is one of the most important experiences a person can have. This doesn’t mean we should try to set ourselves up for failure, but we also shouldn’t postpone growth and change just out of fear of failure. The most important lessons I have learned in love have been through failure. As with most things, overcoming a neediness for love ends up allowing us access to it. The less you need, the more you have.