Unconditional (adjective)
: not limited in any way : complete and absolute
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“Not limited in any way: complete and absolute.” What things in your life can you apply “unconditional” to? The obvious is, of course, love, but what else is there that has no limits in your life in a positive way? Unconditional acceptance? Unconditional support?
I’m going to say right now that the letter U was a difficult one for me. I look up lists of positive words in order to select where each of these post in this FotP series will go. I then go to Merriam-Webster dictionary to get the definition. It’s not that I don’t understand the words as they are, I just like to know what the standard definition is of each word before writing about it. For U, I looked up most of the words in the lists I perused because, for most of them, I could think of nothing to write about them except for their definition. Maybe that’s just where my head is this morning. It’s not that I’m in bad head space, I’m just a little tired and my head seems to want to wander unfettered. But, now, I’ve strayed away from the topic.
Unconditional. Unconditional love. Unconditional acceptance. Unconditional belief. Unconditional….? It feels as if there should be way more things that come to mind that are unconditional but these are the ones that I can come up with this morning. If anyone knows of/thinks of any others, please leave me a comment with it. I would really appreciate it. These posts are as much for me as they are for anyone else that finds strength or understanding from them.
Unconditional love. It is something that everyone in the world should know. Love itself is an amazing feeling, but when you experience unconditional love…wow! Unconditional love is something that each person usually first experiences from their parents. I know there are exceptions to this and it breaks my heart. No child should ever experience any other type of love from their parents. It is how they learn to love themself unconditionally, I believe. My parents, all four of them, have loved me unconditionally. I don’t know how (have I mentioned I was a heathen child?), but they have despite my most valiant attempts to push them away, especially during my teen years.
That said, I have not always had unconditional love for myself. Finding unconditional love for myself took me some time, and a whole lot of pain, to find. This is not my parents’ fault but my own. I did not understand the love they had/have for me and I found way too much in myself that I thought of as lacking to allow myself to love myself unconditionally. I didn’t really understand what unconditional love is.
Even after my kids were born, I didn’t really understand what unconditional love is; I didn’t understand what it meant. This is not to say that I have not always had unconditional love for my kids, because I have. I can not think of a single thing they could ever do or say that could make me not love them endlessly. This is not to say that I love every last thing that they do. It means that despite the things they have done or may do, I love them for who they are: themselves.
I have unconditional love for myself now. I’ve learned that the things that I found/find lacking in myself are not reasons to not love myself without limit. These are just things that show me what I would like to improve on. These self-improvements aren’t for anyone else, but for me. Sure, others may benefit from them, but I am the one that gains the most. When I succeed in my endeavors of improvement, the feeling that comes with it is utterly amazing. Another soul feeder.
Where do you find unconditional love? Do you have it for yourself? Do you have it for anyone else?
Dragonfly Gypsy USA 