Merle Shain Quote on How Loving Someone Should Help Them To Be More Themself

“Loving someone means helping them to be more themselves, which can be different from being what you’d like them to be, although often they turn out the same.”

Merle Shain, Some Men Are More Perfect Than Others

Beyond the Quote (174/365)

Never forget that who you want someone to be is none of your business. Love doesn’t manipulate. Love doesn’t control. Love doesn’t place expectations. Love doesn’t try to change people for who they are. Love is never selfish. Love is a pure manifestation of presence, compassion, gratitude, and joy that is shared with the world. Love is patient. Love is free. And love is always kind.

And when you are sharing that love with any one person in particular, it should blanket them with a warm squeeze of comfort and calm. It should make them feel like they’re more able to be themselves. Like they can be their real, vulnerable, exposed self. The self that is quirky, goofy, flawed, imperfect, unfiltered, unmasked, and raw. It should be a type of feeling where there is no self-consciousness and there are no conditions that either person feels need to be met. It’s a type of freedom and escape rather than a type of obligation or dependency.

Love is not something you take from others. Love is something that others give to you that allows you to open up to what’s inside. Like the sun shining down on a seed. The seed can’t take the rays of the sun and impose them unto itself to force its own awakening. The seed must be patient. The seed must be kind to the sun. The seed can only receive what the sun will give it. And when the sun shines its unconditional rays of love onto the seed, it is only then that the seed can sprout. And so it is with the love that is shared in life.

Love is the fundamental force that allows each of us to spout. It allows us to become what we were always meant to become. It allows us to shed the hard, tough, outer layer and expose our soft, vulnerable, inner selves. It allows us to grow our legs into roots, spread our arms into branches, and blossom what’s inside of our DNA so we can fully embody what we could never become alone. For, the seed without the sun remains but a seed. And if we were meant to grow into the miracle that is a tree, we have to be willing to receive what sunlight we’re given.

Love is the answer. Love is always the answer. Love will get you to where you deserve to be. You simply need to receive the love that is shining down all around you. Trying to “take” love is as futile as trying to grab rays of light. Be patient. Be kind. Become a radiator of love yourself. And you, too, shall receive. For, like the rays of the sun, the energy of love is inexhaustible, abundant, and here for all. Rays of light are not selective. They fall upon us all. Just get out of the shade, surround yourself with those who shine, and receive all that is.

Sending love to those who need it the most right now. I hope you can feel the rays shining onto you through this very screen. If not for nothing, it is being pulled out of me to say that my love, at the very least, will always be here for you.

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