This thing called Love

I think love is the most important thing in this life. First, we have to learn to love ourselves so that we can really accept other's love. And in loving ourselves we can really learn to love others. Everybody always says that in order to find love, the romantic kind, we have to really love ourselves. I think its a good point, although I dont have any validation for that. Another kind of love, is the kind we give to our friends. I cant say how important I think it is that everybody has a community of friends that really, honestly loves and appreciates them. This kind of love from friends can help us realize that we are loveable and we can begin to love ourselves...kind of complteting the circle. And then,alas, there is the family love. The kind of love that really is transparent. The kind where you know pretty much everything about them, have so many shared experiences and connections and you still love each other anyway..because they are your family and you know that they are always going to be there for you no matter what. Theres another kind of love that we often dont show..and its to people that we dont know. This kind of love is sooo important, it makes people's day. What I'm talking about is smiling at someone you pass by, being polite to someone you dont know, asking a classmate how they are doing...or just starting a conversation and genuinly caring about what they have to say. This kind of love needs to be shown more often, in my opinion. I read this great book called "Blue Like Jazz" and it talks about how Christian religious stuff is dumb alot of the times and misguided. But the spiritual part is whats worth getting into. It also talks about how the Christian faith is supposed to be about loving people and thus showing Christ's love for everybody. Loving people--not judging or condemning them..or separating ourselves from people that we think are different from us. Thats profound to me. I want to love people all of my life--lift them up. I think a lot of us are trying to fill a hole that we have in our life thats meant for love--a lot of us feel like we are missing "love" and sometimes we think all we need to make the hole go away is 'romantic' love. And its important too, but its not all there is too it. I think that I have been searching for this 'romantic' love for all of my life. I can remember as alittle girl..planning my wedding, imagining boyfriends, making up our life story together, falling hard for my crushes, and just wishing i had a boy to be there for me and comfort me when i was having a rough time. I was definitely needing some love...some attention in my life. Some of it probably had to do with the fact that when i was little..i was pretty much an only child..so I had lots and lots of free time to imagine..my mom worked all the time..and i didnt see my dad often. So maybe I was trying to replace him, who knows. But even now that I am older, Im still searching for this kind of love. I've never experience it and im eager to. Man, there is so much to get into on this topic. Am I being not healthy when I think about how I want a boyfriend? Is that not normal? Am I not busy enough or productive enough that I still would like to experience that? I really dont think so..but I guess some people get that impression. The word "desperate" is floated around about girls who are single and want a guy. But I dont like this and I dont think this is accurate. I think, for the most part, we all want companionship--and sometimes the longing for companionship tends to be stronger if you've never had it in the form of a boyfriend. Also, if all us single girls were desperate then we would be dating any and every boy just to be around somebody. Thats not the case for me. I am waiting for the right person. I dont wanna waste my time on somebody I dont love as a person. Do I set my standards to high? Nope, I dont think so. Im just waiting for him to come along,,and in the meantime Im just gonna ponder this whole crazy situation. I think if we all showed each other more love..then this world would be SO much better. If we all cared..and we all did something about the problems we all face..there would be no poverty..there would be no war.. but that, it seems, is a very tall order. Loving people feels good. When I smile and someone and they smile back..it makes my day---its a connection. It reminds me that people are good. Let me go on a final tanget.. I LOVE smiles.. they are amazing... they make my day. So, maybe we should all smile more often too...but, um..not to much cuz that can get a little creepy ;] Anyways, now that I've christened my new blog with a blog I can relax :] Good day.