“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” – John 13:34

Happy Eid Al-Fatr y’all! 🙂

I decided to hold back in writing about love until the very end of Ramadan because it is the very essence of God. We as human beings have the capacity to love one another and ourselves, but so often we don’t. Why is that? Is it because love is in short supply or ? I think that some reasons why so many of us go without loving others is because we get selfish, we expect it without putting any effort in, we think love is something that will just fall in our laps, we get self-absorbed, we get scared…

I too am scared of love, more to the point true intimacy; because it is one thing to chill with your peeps and be unabashedly bold in what you say without thinking or blinking (or maybe you think and blink but you know what you’re saying will get a reaction of some sort.) but it is entirely different to put out the same things to a significant other, or at least I perceive it to be, because at the end of the night you go back to your SO’s place or your SO comes over to your place and you’re left with what you said.

And while I am careful in being articulate and communicating what I want to say so that there’s no misunderstanding as to what I have to say, I still worry to a certain extent, I worry will I still be liked and I worry will I still be loved. And I want to be liked and I want to be loved, and yet it is the root of my inhibition to be bold, to take risks, to ask girls out on dates…I am a work in progress, and I am getting over myself, but unfortunately I’ve been in that rut for a while.

Yet despite my hesitations it doesn’t slow me down in working on becoming the best possible version of me. I love me, healthily and wholly, I am glad I am me and not someone else because then I wouldn’t be me! Silly perhaps, but I am glad to be alive because it’s great to be alive! (My coworker reminds us all this on a daily basis, and I concur.)

I believe in love. I believe in being loved and loving others. I believe that love conquers all and drives out fear. I believe that everyone is deserving of love. I believe that everyone has the capacity to love others. I also recognize within my being that I am loved even when I don’t feel like I am being loved, being in community assures me of that on a regular basis, for I am a recipient of love and a giver of love myself.

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I was extended love on Eid Al-Fatr by way of having an Eid dinner with my good friend and his family and friends. The majority of the time was spent talking to him and his 3 younger cousins, it was great to be in community and to have serious and silly conversations. Dinner was great too! Pakistani food, and also dessert, it was great to simply be with my friend and his family plus. I was caught up with it all during part of the evening, I found myself meditating and being present but being overwhelmed by the beauty and wonder of it all. I am thankful to God for moments when all my senses are in tune with my being and I feel deeply present where I’m at.

It is my intention to do better at loving others and to put some of my worries and what-if’s to the side as I pursue loving in a dating relationship context. Because I know what it is like to be loved and to love someone else, and there is no better feeling in the world than love because love put this world and universe into motion and it sustains it still.

So with all that being said, love was my keyword on the 30th day of Ramadan. Thanks be to God, The Source of Love, who loves us and knows us, deeply and truly. May we learn to love one another as God has loved us, may we learn to love ourselves, may we learn to meet people where they are at when they’re in need of love, on their terms and not our own.

Salaam alaikum be yours now and always,

Nathanael