Love Just Isn’t Enough

Woah!! Super inflammatory way to start this off! Going strong! LOVE ISN’T ENOUGH! And you don’t have to agree or maybe this gives you big feelings - I don’t know, I’m not here to anticipate your experience. I’m really just here to share the thoughts I have on mine.

So, let’s truly start by saying that if we lived in a world where all our needs were met and we weren’t terrified to communicate and our nervous systems were regulated and we had systems that supported the basic functions of human life then maybe love would be enough.

Love is super fucking important.

As a resource from the universe, love is abundant and always flowing.

Love is valuable and necessary and foundational and truly is needed - but I just don’t think it is enough.

And I say this because while we can do things with love, in the name of love, or the vain of it or intention with it; while it can be the most powerful healer and force on earth, we need other things to support it.

Looking at it relationally, we need more than just love to make things work with people. Here I’m looking at specifically romantically but really it can apply to any relational context. We need time, mutual understanding, respect, energy, communication - we need RESOURCES! And while we can resource from love, I’m not sure I really know that love itself is inherently a resource. Or at least not a resource that can do everything we need it to.

I sort of see love as water - it is completely essential and necessary - or maybe even better yet love is oxygen. I know, super original. But we need even that to make water. We need it to make pretty much everything. If we want roads (communication) we need water as a part of that process, oxygen as a part of that process - but not just that.

If we want clothes, food, homes, families, books, plants, animals - if we really want anything at all yes we need that oxygen, we need that love, but we inherently need other things.

Which gets me thinking to, okay love just isn’t enough and it is absolutely necessary. I don’t wan to refute the importance or power of it, but I do get myself deep into contemplation about how this notion that love itself can singlehandedly produce everything we need is so dangerous for us because it releases the responsibility and clarity needed to show up for the things that sustain love. Which is really what this is all about.

If love is the match, and we strike it just right, what does it ignite? What does it need to survive and endure? What are the conditions? Because we are in the world, and we do need resources, and it is inevitable that there will be experiences and feelings that are not simply love or of love that appear before us or from within us or between us and what do we do then? Drown it out? What do we do then, beat the other stuff into submission until it conforms to something we have been told is the ultimate, only thing?

I don’t mean to sound pessimistic here because I do believe that with the intention and purity of love we can deeply heal, connect, make choices and impacts that are revolutionary and even evolutionary. I believe in the power of it which is why I also believe in the necessity of supporting it. Love isn’t our tool or scape goat or complete saviour. It is and can be many things, but not to use and abuse as the thing - the only thing that is. And we must recognize as humans we are like batteries with a certain charge we can hold - including with love. We can increase our capacity, we can acknowledge what it means to care for the lifespan of this battery. To support it, to upgrade it. Whatever you will, however you want to look at it. But to simply put the onus of our responsibility in how we utilize it simply on the function or existence of it feels irresponsible and nearly abusive.

And not to get to melodramatic but if love was enough we would all be fed, and we would all have families and we would all be educated in the way we wanted to and we would all be safe. If love was truly, intrinsically enough the world would be a different place.

So I am thinking about what we really mean when we say things like this. Love is strong enough perhaps. It is abundant enough, available enough. Love is sturdy enough, enduring enough, capable enough, malleable enough. But it also endures so much of our blame, expectation, promise, and voids. Love, or the name of it, has taken quite a beating under human care. Love needs us as much as we need it and this is my deepest contemplation of it. If love is truly to be something we believe to be enough, how do we support it as such? Does enoughness equate to only-ness? Which is to say does something being enough mean it’s the only thing needed? I have enough flour for my bread, but I cannot actually make it without the other ingredients. I have enough love to be in a healthy relationship, but I cannot sustain it without the other elements. I suppose, on another hand, love being enough isn’t necessarily saying love is the only thing we need - although I feel it is implied. I feel there is a laziness to this; that when things do not work it is so easy to say “there was not love” or “it was not true love” or whatever other story we can point towards it so that it can take responsibility for its faults, for its unwillingness to show up in the face of its capability, for the pressure we put on love to perform for us instead of imbue itself through our actions.

I don’t really have a point to all of this. There isn’t a pretty way to wrap it up yet and I’m okay with that. I’m learning to be okay with needing more than something we have told ourselves is everything when really what we mean is that it can be in everything. There needs to be something for love to show up in, through, and with which is what I am holding as I create the life I want. Imbued with love, and supported by all the rest.