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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGrowing up I lost the meaning of love. My parents\u2019 love was conditional and harsh. They often prefaced severe punishments with the words, \u201cWe\u2019re doing this because we love you\u201d, leaving me fervently wishing they loved me less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I told them I loved them, they\u2019d tell me that if I really loved them, I\u2019d be a good boy, I\u2019d do this, I wouldn\u2019t do that. This left me seriously confused. By the time I reached adulthood I was convinced that I was somehow emotionally stunted, unable to feel true human love. I didn\u2019t know what love was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite this, I never lost the ability to love. I loved people, I loved cats, I felt love as well as anyone else. My heart wasn\u2019t confused, only my head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once in therapy I was struggling to explain that I felt some sort of thing about my cat, and she seemed to feel a similar thing for me. The word \u2018love; never even occurred to me. As I struggled to find words, my therapist interrupted and said, \u201cYou love her, and she loves you. It\u2019s that simple\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was dumbfounded. I knew it was true. I suddenly understood that all throughout my life, that emotion I felt was real, genuine love. Far from being a cold, unloving man, I had always been deeply loving. I just hadn\u2019t understood that this was love I was feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I feel a sense of loss and sadness over a lifetime spent not knowing about love, not feeling I had a right to claim I felt it, refusing to say what I thought was a lie \u2013 and causing hurt because of that. And yet I am grateful to know that despite everything, I am and always have been a deeply loving person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My cat taught me another lesson about love. She has always been affectionate, often giving me unsolicited (and sometimes unwanted) kisses. Once as she was waking me up with such loving attention, I felt saddened to think that I didn\u2019t deserve such love, \u201cif only she knew what a loser I am.\u201d But then it occurred to me that this little cat didn\u2019t love me because I deserved it, or because I had done anything to earn it. She just loved me. I understood that she loved me for no better reason than the one I had for loving her \u2013 which is to say, for no reason. I love her; she loves me. It\u2019s that simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it is with people. I don\u2019t love the people in my life because they deserve it, or have done anything remarkable. I love them because that\u2019s what I do. It\u2019s what people do, if they\u2019re not afraid of being hurt. Love isn\u2019t some mysterious, special emotion only a few rare people ever experience. It is what we do, whenever possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I learned that from a cat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have learned a great deal from my cats. Some of these lessons were about love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-social-impact"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}