Learning To Love

I think it was fairly early on in my adulthood (maybe late teens, even) that I started to form a pretty strong opinion about what love is. There are very few things in my life that I feel like I really believe firmly in, but I really believe in my definition of love.

To me, love is work. It is not really about fairytales or butterflies or anything like that. It is about making a commitment to another person to check in with them, to really make time for them, to put their needs before my own wants. And I have believed for a long time, that, at the end of the day, I could put in the effort to do that with most people. However, I have also believed for a long time that there are VERY few people in the world that I (and the "I" here is actually a bit similar to the universal "you") would be willing to do that for. That, even though I could do it, the romantic in me still thinks, when I think about love, that, even though I am prepared to do a lot of work for it, I am only willing to do it with people who I am attracted to enough.

So now, for the first time (maybe ever), I am starting to realize that my definition of love is actually only about romantic love, only about love with a partner (or maybe also about loving close friends). Which means I have no idea how to love people that I'm not romantically linked to (or that I don't connect to in a way that only close friends do).

Currently, the 3 people that I feel most compelled to love are all people that I don't even like a lot of the time. They are people, in my opinion, who are desperately in need of more love, and yet I can't seem to muster it. They often aren't nice. They lie to my face. One of them has slapped me across the face. They have no idea how to attach to people. Half of the time they treat me as if I am their servant. How do I love people like THAT? I can feel compassion (though sometimes, when I am getting yelled at and directly disobeyed, even that is hard) and sympathy. I can get mad FOR them and the cards they have been dealt. But how do I love them? How do I give them the one thing in the world that I think they need more than anything else (well, maybe 2nd to some freaking discipline...)

I am fascinated by my inability to love these children. Partially because it seems to effect (why can i NEVER remember affect/effect rules???) all of us so strongly. For them, I don't really represent a safe place. I am not invested enough in their lives. They know I hold back. They can feel the disinterest coming from me. for me, I feel horribly guilty that I can't figure out how to love them. because, A. I watch them and see how they struggle and i KNOW they need love. And it makes me hurt for them that i seem so incapable of giving it. and B. I feel like I am horrible at my job because I really do believe the best way I could do my job is to love these kids more. So I feel professionally unsatisfied with myself in a really tangible way. in so many ways, my job isn't challenging or stimulating, but yet i am failing at it. how is that possible???

I am not even sure what it would look like if i suddenly started loving these children. Would it be emotional? Would I feel attached to them and want to spend more time with them? Would it be some super happy emotion all the time? Would I take pride in things they do well? What does it look like? What am i supposed to be giving these children that I am not giving?