Without presence, there is no love

When we are babies, our survival is totally dependent on someone showing up at the most cricitcal moments in our lives.

When we are hungry, we need someone to show up to feed us. And when they do, we feel loved.

When we have medical needs, we need someone to show up and take our temperature and get us to the doctor. And when they do, we feel loved.

There's no way around it - when we are babies, there is nothing we can do to tend to our own survival. We need others to show up and tend to it. And when they do, we feel loved.

In the earliest seconds of our lives - as babies - we come to define love as people saving our lives. If all the world around us was sitting on their phones, or tending to their own lives instead of ours, if all the world around us was too busy to notice our needs and our desires, we would die.

Not movie scene die - but really die.

I think some days in our adult lives we think the definition of love changes. That somehow love becomes something different than being attuned with and attentive toward and responsive to - to simply be present with - another human being.

Too many days we want to make love something that requires far less of us. Something that doesn't need our attention - or investment.

Something that doesn't require our presence.

As a result, a lot of adults are dying for love. Dying without it.

Not movie scene die. But really die.

I think it's time to get back to the roots of love - to the definition that got wired into us as babies.

For a lot of people, our new defintion isn't working.
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