Types of Love

Love

At TTANTI we’re gluttons for love. Give us all the love! Throw the word around liberally, use it like you mean it -- more love is always better. We love all love, and we’re not afraid to admit it. There is just nothing better than being filled with the contented, delirious, comforting and thrilling emotion of love. The all-encompassing crazy love from a dramatic movie to the everyday love you feel for your favorite sandwich made by your grandma. Love is always good, love is always worthy and love is always present. What types of love are there out there? Let’s explore a few …


Love for yourself. Sometimes this might be the hardest of all. It’s difficult to imagine loving yourself when you’ve made the same mistake again. When you’ve screwed something up for the umpteenth time. When once again you’ve failed and disappointed. But arguably, this is the most important love. For without first learning how to love and care for ourselves, how can we pass love on or receive it from others? This isn’t unhealthy vanity or narcissism. This is about healthy strength in yourself. Understanding yourself, appreciating yourself and feeling comfortable in your own skin. It is something to be celebrated and admired.

Love of experience. Have you ever been so overcome with emotion in the middle of a moment - be it ordinary or extraordinary? Gratitude washing over you, beauty swarming you as you’re experiencing life? Soak it in! This is the love of experience. Maybe it’s a novel experience, like the chance to visit somewhere far-flung and shockingly beautiful, but maybe it’s also just a tender everyday moment that fills your heart with contentment. Either way, revel in it, enjoy the heck out of it, and never allow yourself to feel jaded by it.


Enduring love. We spend an awful lot of time looking for love, hoping to find love and seeking love … and yet so little time into maintaining the relationships that could provide us with this deeply satisfying and comforting love. Enduring love isn’t particularly newsworthy or shocking. It isn’t dramatic or passionate. It’s slow and steady, full of compromises, tender and soft, patched together with patience and tolerance. It’s the type of love between old married couples or in decades old friendships, where you know someone so well they become a part of your soul. It’s beyond romance, beyond passion - it’s the type of stability that could be seen as boring if it weren’t so rare and extraordinary.

Love of learning. Some people just can’t get enough learning. Their minds hunger for more, their brains thirst for knowledge and their hands are probably always holding a book or two. The love of learning, the quest for expanding your mind need not be a purely academic pursuit -- when you love learning you seek it out in all avenues. Through book knowledge, through speaking with others, through explorations and through trial and error. People who revel in the love of learning find opportunities for learning in the strangest circumstances, and come away delighted with even the strangest encounters -- because they always pick up a new tidbit of knowledge to love!


Unconditional love. This type of love might just only exists between a dog and his owner. The love that greets you at the door, even after you’ve been gone for hours and hours and are well past dinnertime, tail wagging, eyes bright and only one thing on his mind: making YOU happy. Unconditional love is, quite obviously, when there are no conditions placed upon the love: where there is truly nothing that can break the bond of love. When you are able to place the happiness of someone else above your own happiness, that’s unconditional love. Where else will you find this? The quintessential love, the first love, where it all began: a mother for her child.

What, who, where and how are you loving today, TTANTI family? We want to celebrate with you. Share in the comments!