“Love rarely overtakes, it mostly comes to meet us.”
–Wilhelm Stekel
Some of us seem to be running away from love. We have so much confidence in our own ability to take care of our needs that we may feel that we do not need others. But absolutely none of us can live this life alone, and when we try to do so, we reject the greatest gift of this world, the love of God and the love of other people.
If we want to be loved by other people, we must be lovable and loving, and we must recognize what is and what is not love. Love is not doing favors for others with the hope that we will somehow be rewarded for our efforts. And love is certainly not something we can buy for any amount of money. Some of the richest people in this world, in terms of money, are some of the poorest when it comes to loving relationships. Love is the giving of our time and ourselves to God and to others freely and without condition. When we do something out of pure love, we do not expect any compensation or reward in return.
We cannot make another person love us no matter how hard we try. One of the greatest tragedies in life involves children born to parents who do not give them unconditional love. Far too many parents attempt to withhold their love from their children in order to get them to behave in a certain way. In essence, the children get the message that they have to behave in such a way as to win or “earn” the love of their parents. Love is something that is given without condition, and if it is not given without condition, we cannot possibly “earn” that love, no matter what we do. The counterpart of that is when children attempt to control their parents by threatening to withhold their love unless the parents do what the children want. The situation is also common in relationships between husbands and wives, where one partner attempts to gain power over the other by implying that a certain kind of behavior will bring about increased love by one’s spouse.
By its very nature, love cannot be either withheld or earned. When we love someone, that love is a gift from our heart, and we cannot possibly make it conditional on anything. Of course, this does not mean that we will always approve of the behavior of those we love. We may be very disappointed in the behavior of a loved one, but we do not withdraw the gift of our love because of that behavior.
Think about it.
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Copyright 2026
Allen W. Smith
