LOVE IS TOO ELUSIVE and individualized to permit a definition. However, we can ask, “What can love be?” This is not a definition but a request for an ever-renewed invitation, something we can keep daring to enter, like Alice persevering in her adventures in Wonderland.

Showing patient and enduring love helps someone change more than badgering or demanding ever will.

We know that everyone wants to be loved, but some people have given up hope of finding or showing it.

We have boundaries but have erected no barrier,

The one thing to remember is that those who give us what was missing in our past also show us what was missing. That combination of fulfillment and grief can be hard to hold, so we have to be patient with ourselves.

love is not a feeling in itself, but every feeling can happen with love:

Allowing is supporting someone’s choice even if we do not agree with it. Allowing does not always mean accepting, but accepting always includes allowing.

Another example from Buddhism helps us see how we are becoming prepared to love. It is bodhicitta. This Sanskrit word refers to a longing to be enlightened and to help others find that same enlightenment. From the perspective of bodhicitta, we can say that we are not complete until we share ourselves. Since love is our deepest identity, that means

We feel love now as we first received it; we give love the way others gave it to us. Thus, since love is unique to each person, we read and write love, receive and give it, in the style designed by our past experience. Yet, like good handwriting, our unique signature can be read by others.