There was a time not so long ago, when I believed that love was something we had to build upon with another person. However, I now wonder if I had it all wrong. Trust is surely something we have to build upon with others. But trust is not love.
Perhaps then love is what we discover when we begin to dissolve the boundaries we divide ourselves behind, and maybe trust is a tool we can use to chip away at some of those barriers.
Why do we feel so close and so loving towards one another when under the influence of some psychedelic drugs? Is it because the drugs miraculously create the love and allow it to shine through us? Or is it far more simply, that the drugs relax those walls that life in modern society forced us to put up between one another?
What is the reasoning behind many people's ability to love animals so much easier than humans? Is it perhaps because they needn't worry about fearing judgement or ridicule from their pets, and consequently fewer barriers make it easier for them to catch sight of the love that already exists underneath?
Why do we love our families so fiercely? Is it because we've spent so much time with them, that our love has grown? Or could it be because the comfort we feel around them to be ourselves, that we may not feel with everyone else, relaxes our defensive boundaries and allows us to experience the love burning brightly inside?
Why does love for a romantic partner often seem to be the most powerful of loves? Is it because sex amplifies love? Or is there any chance it is because our lover is normally the person who knows us the best; who we lower every boundary for; and who we allow to see us naked in both a physical and a metaphorical sense, creating the best opportunity for the full intensity of our love to be exchanged through the absence of divisive barriers?
If love is an underlying current, waiting to be discovered between any two human beings brave enough to break down the walls that lie between them: then how can we take this information and put it to good use in becoming more loving people?
Why don't we feel an overwhelming love for the homeless person asleep on the side of the road? Would recognising the barriers we've put in place to prevent ourselves getting hurt by them help us to love them? It would be hurtful, given their position, for us to know that their life is just as important as our own. And yet to understand that their existence holds an infinite amount of possible futures that could shape the world in any manner of significance - just like our own - reveals to us that their life is just as important as our own. It would be painful to accept that we are responsible for the position they've found themselves in. And yet to realise that we've played a role in perpetuating the system that has left them without a roof over their head, would alert us to the fact that we are indeed partially responsible. It would be more burdensome still to accept that we might have the power to better their position, but that perhaps only fear of failure, or of losing some comfort from our own lives prevents us from doing so. And yet if we took a moment we would know that we do have the power and we are making the conscious decision not to help.
Within these three observations, we find the making of three barriers that we rely on to protect us from loving that stranger on the side of the road. Because love and compassion invite the potential for hurt, and the call to action that we'd be far more comfortable ignoring. While I bet there are far more than three barriers between each and everyone of us, identifying them and finding the bravery to overcome them, may be the best possible approach to maximising love in our lives.