some thoughts about love and freedom

I was an animal loving kid, but not surprising for those who know me, I loved them mostly by reading books about them.  I must confess that I went through a pretty big marine mammal stage, probably around 3rd grade.  I was a little torn, because the boy I had a crush on loved chimpanzees, so I also felt a like I needed to brush up on primates.  Still, dolphins were really my thing.  Then, I read Born Free and it moved me right into a lion stage (probably exacerbated by the Chronicles of Narnia.) 

I loved Born Free, the story of Joy Adamson and her husband, George, naturalists living in Kenya.  They raised an orphaned lion cub, Elsa.  I was enthralled by how they cared for her, the affection between such a wild creature and humans.  And then, after raising her to adulthood, how they slowly set her free into the wild.  They helped her learn what would have been instinctual had she been raised by a lion mother - to hunt and kill, to protect herself, and socialize with other lions.  Eventually, the humans who loved Elsa mostly just watched her from afar - the lion fully integrated into a wild pride. 

Ooh, I still get choked up thinking about it.

It makes me think about love.  What is real love?

In my deepest heart, I believe that loving other people means giving them room to make choices, including the choice to have space from us.

We want people to love us like we love them.  We want to be reassured of their love.  When we become anxious that they are going away or we don't have them as close as we want them we try to get them to reassure us.  Sometimes we do this by throwing a tantrum, sometimes we do this by playing games, trying to make them jealous.  Sometimes we even go away ourselves, maybe, to make them chase us.  This is really just a way to control someone else's behavior.  Real love is given feely. 

If we want to give our love, we should give our love, but remove our expectation that it will be given back in the exact way we want it to be given.  Real love is not manipulating another person's choices.  Real love is honoring the other's freedom, and our own.