This question seems obvious but not obvious.
If someone asks me that question, I say "yes, love is a choice.
" Right? Makes sense - you choose to love something, you give your love to something, you feel love for something.
But do we act as if it's a choice or if it just happens? What does popular culture tell us? Popular culture tells us love magically happens.
You walk up to someone and see it in their eyes, then feel it in your heart, then music plays and you get this strange look on your face that all but assures you that you have been struck by love.
It's a sad, sort of concerned look, as per the jewelry commercials I see, but apparently that's what love is.
And apparently it's brought about and increased by jewelry and other gifts.
The more money you spend, the more love there is.
Ok, that's a lot of bull****.
We know that.
Logically we know that, but how do we act every day regarding love? Wouldn't we love everything every day? Some say we can - so why don't we? This is something that's been on my mind the last several days, brought about by Rhonda Byrne's "The Power".
The Power is a book about love, plain and simple.
Love, positive thinking, and positive expectations.
I've been reading the book (not done yet) and it got me thinking about the choices I make every day.
Not so much the choices regarding what to eat, what to wear, when to get up, and so on - although it's all related to today's topic - but the choices in how I respond to everything that goes on.
That's part of Byrne's book too (and most every other book on the Self).
I came to realize that I chose to respond negatively to a lot of the things that go on around me.
Dog barking loudly for no reason? I responded by feeling anger, frustration, and resentment.
I didn't give a thought to why my dog was barking and what the dog might be feeling - I just got angry that the peace and quiet I was enjoying was broken.
Baby sound asleep until 10pm, when at the moment I lay down in bed she begins crying for hours? I'd again choose frustration and anger, though tempered with tolerance due to the situation.
From the computer crashing to the vacuum breaking, I felt anger and despair.
I look back now and think how foolish it is.
I have choices.
We all have choices.
We either don't know we have choices, or blindly choose the less pleasurable response.
So what this brought me to is the question: can I choose love in this situation? This begs other questions: what is love? What does it feel like? How do I give it? What if I'm angry and don't want to give it.
Therein lies the issue - it's a choice.
You choose love or you don't.
But why does it feel like we have no choice? The dog starts going crazy and the anger wells up right away - so when is the choice made? It's about habit.
Responding to these situations is a habit you develop.
By a certain age, it's ingrained and unconscious.
Certain things will evoke a feeling of anger.
The longer the habit takes hold, the more awareness on your part it will take to change your response.
But it can be changed! It truly is a choice.
And it's a quality-of-life issue.
If you could feel badly or you could feel good, what would increase your quality-of-life? It takes practice.
The first step is truly understanding and believing it's a choice.
With all negative emotions and responses, you can begin choosing other responses.
It takes time at first - the normal response will come out, but eventually you'll be aware.
Then you tell yourself to feel love, or forgiveness, or whatever you want to change your response to.
Just try - and maybe it won't work the first time, or the second time.
Just try.
And just keep doing it.
Stick with it.
At some junction you'll have that magical moment where something happens that would normally anger you and the trigger will bed diminished or gone.
It just won't be there.
You'll be kind of stunned at first, like you're missing something.
You'll know in your head, and even may say to yourself "I should be angry right now" but the feeling just won't be there, or will be diminished.
There's your progress! Then you continue ahead, choosing the emotion and/or response you want.
Just keep going.
The progress will continue in the same direction.
Practice, practice, practice, like anything else you want to learn.
At some point you'll respond with love in the situation that previously troubled you without any effort.
It will be your new habit.
You'll remember what it used to be like, and maybe will even feel silly now having learned that you had choices but you were unaware.
And, your quality-of-life will have increased.
Whatever your status-quo feeling is day in and day out, whether or not you are aware of it - there's a better feeling just ahead.
It's an amazing thing to start living with that better feeling.
For me, for so long, I had a baseline of general unhappiness.
I liked to put myself in situations with long odds and fight like heck like some kind of crusader, and would often encounter loads of frustration and anger.
I just thought that's how things were.
Over the years I've elevated my baseline, which results in less situations like that.
Or none, really.
I came to see that life didn't have to be that way, and I learned to tolerate and begin to thrive with feelings of peace and well-being.
There was a time where I wasn't used to those feelings at all, and even when I'd get them for a while, I'd go back to what was comfortable - which was conflict and fear.
So what I'm doing now is choosing love.
Dog goes nuts? Choose love.
Baby refuses to sleep.
Choose love.
Get a curveball at work and think you're sunk? Choose love.
Situations change after this choice.
Love works miracles - love changes attitudes - yours and others.
I'd avoid trying to plan how it will work - miracles are not in the human domain.
As best I can tell at this point, or at least for my personal situation, all I can do is choose love and let the Universe do the rest.
And I can tell you I've already noticed changes in the people around me (including my dogs!).