Love 101: A Refresher Course

Photo Courtesy of your-lifestyleonline.com 






It’s back to school season and while the kids are loading up on notebooks, pens, crayons, and pencils, I thought it would be a perfect time for us to revisit school ourselves. How about a quick refresher course on love? With the world growing colder with each passing day, sometimes we need to be reminded about ways in which we can enhance and grow the love that we presently have in our lives or attract new love to us. In order to do this, we need to have some fundamental understanding about what love is and what love isn’t. We also need to build up our love vocabulary, so we can verbally communicate our love effectively. However, when words aren’t enough, we need to have practical ways to show our love through affection and physical acts. Show and tell in love is a powerful combination. So let’s pretend we’re in school and the subject we must pass is Love 101.






After all, how can we profess love for someone if we have no idea what it means to love? You don’t need to be a genius, but you do need to be willing to learn and try new things out with practical application to see what works for you and your loved ones. Love is not a generic, one-size-fit all experience. Love should be tailor made to fit each individual relationship. Learning how to evolve in love is also crucial. I still make mistakes because I’m still learning and growing personally as an individual, but I’m determined to leave my mark of love on the people who I’m blessed to encounter. It’s very important for the people around me to feel loved by me. So, I will forever be a student of love. So, let’s get started. Class is now in session at Love U ! Patch Adams said it best, “Imagine if we taught Love in schools as a subject like math…what a different world we would live in.” Yes Patch I do agree! So here goes.



Love Defined

Thefreedictionary.com defines love (n.) to mean: 1. A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. 2. A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance. Love (v.) means: 1. To have an intense emotional attachment to 2. To embrace or caress. 3. To like or desire enthusiastically 4. To thrive on; need: Love (v.intr.)1. To experience deep affection or intense desire for another.



Love is subjective and is shown and interpreted in as many ways as there are people and animals on the planet. Love is demonstrated in some of the following actions; kindness, respect, consideration, a decision, hard work, friendship, communication and sharing, affection, honesty, responsibility, vulnerability, trust, action, emotional attachment and the list can go on and on.



Love isn’t violence, abuse, selfishness, pain, jealously, possessiveness, hurtful actions, doing harm to someone, dependency, manipulation, deceit, the physical act of sex without emotional attachment, and this list too is endless, but you get the picture. Love is not self-seeking and it is not a weapon used to inflict pain upon someone. Anyone who says otherwise is lying and is not seeking to love, but to harm and destroy. Love doesn’t tear down, it builds up.



So now that our foundation for love has been laid, we can build upon it by developing our love vocabulary. In the next course of Love U we will start with the basics of building our love vocabulary! Until then, share with me some of your personal definitions of love?



With Love & Gratitude,

~C. NzinghaC. Nzingha Smith, Principal at SNC2 INK & Get Off Pause Consulting. A Solutionist & Author.