Pretty Southern

Tag: Blume Photography

  • Love is a Gift

    This is the third part of a daily series, “Five Things About Love (that are hard to understand)” by Miles McClellan. This series originally ran on McClellan’s blog and he was kind enough to share it with you, dear reader. So here’s to love – the good, bad, and all the nitty gritty (sometimes pretty) stuff in between.

    The expectation of reciprocity is one of the most widespread misconceptions about true, abiding love that I have encountered. I feel fortunate to have recognized it at a young age.

    The idea that, for what love you give to another, you are supposed to receive some love in return; that your gift of love entitles you to demand likewise… this is fundamentally false. It is a fabrication of the selfish. No one ever won over the love of their life with an ultimatum. While everyone should hold themselves to a standard in their treatment of others, love should never be used to force those we profess to love into giving us what we demand, no matter how justified we feel.

    Love is not an exchange.

    Love is a gift, given freely, given without expectations, and ultimately given without any regard whatsoever to what we have been given or how we have been treated ourselves.

    Remember that the next time you give your girlfriend something nice and are tempted to feel slighted when you don’t get back what you expected, tempted to blame her for being selfish. Give in to that temptation, and the only one being selfish may be you.

    For at that point, you haven’t “given” her anything at all.

    We shouldn’t ever expect love as if we are entitled to it. With that attitude, we won’t appreciate it as much when we receive it, let alone from the right people. We have to learn how to truly give our hearts away before we can ever receive another’s properly.

    If you love him and you’ve shown it, you have already done the right thing by giving him your love. If he loves you, he will do right by you in his own way and on his own time, and it will not be because of anything you did for him. It will be because he wants to.

    It is for this very reason that couples who are truly in love with one another, who are together to stay, are so much the envy of the rest of us. Ask any of them why they love one another so much, and the answers will never seem self-interested. They won’t be able to nail down specifics, because the specifics are not the source. They just don’t matter.

    The answer will be something more like “Because she inspires me.”

    Or…“Because he makes me happy.” It will be because they simply want to.

    Editor’s Note: “Five Things” is a series by Miles McClellan. Click here to read the first post, Love is not an easy thing and the second Love knows no boundaries. All images for the “Five Things About Love” series are courtesy of Blume Photography.

    Editor’s Note: artwork by Phillip Blume Photography

    MilesMiles McClellan is the author behind the psychology, philosophy, and fiction blog How to Throw a Book. Already a graduate of the University of Georgia’s Grady College, he is a student of all things psychological and recently published his first book Vigil of the Ageless.

     

  • Love Knows No Boundaries

    This is the second part of a series, “Five Things About Love (that are hard to understand)” by Miles McClellan. This series originally ran on McClellan’s blog and he was kind enough to share it with you, dear reader. So here’s to love – the good, bad, and all the nitty gritty (sometimes pretty) stuff in between. The last entry was for the young at heart. Happily, I find love’s challenge is something that most couples figure out as they move away from their youth together. This one’s for everybody, though. I am still relatively young myself, yet I have a feeling I will need to remind myself of this as much when I am 60 as I will in a few short years when I turn 30.

    For it is a much harder thing to learn, that love knows no boundaries.

    When we envision what love should look like or what it should feel like, especially when we try to predict when we will be ready for love, we tend to ascribe certain boundaries to it. We create checklists, prerequisites, like a “sweet spot” we imagine for ourselves, or for the man or woman of our dreams.

    In our own cases, we tell ourselves that we can’t fall in love unless we have something else fall into place first. In the case of our partner, we grow up teaching ourselves that true love is only possible within the boundaries we, ourselves, have created for them. We will only allow ourselves to fall for someone who is and has “x,” “y,” and “z.” Commonplace as these practices are, they are misguided.

    We should not kid ourselves that love answers to us.

    Love rarely shows up in the form we expect. It has its own placement and its own timing, and you are not the one in control. It is a mind-numbing, heartbreaking truth, a reality that we should be confronting every day, that we could encounter someone who hits within our self-manufactured boundaries, even in their complete, dead-on, bulls-eye center…

    And feel nothing.

    Just as we could encounter someone so far removed from that comfort zone that we have to struggle within ourselves just to recognize they are anything remotely like us at all… and yet fall harder, farther, and more deeply for them than we ever imagined possible.

    There is no sin in keeping a standard, but we too often allow our standards to become strongholds. That said, I must acknowledge that two people within one another’s comfort zones can certainly fall in love. Of course they can. Having commonality always makes falling in love easier. Such a pair can stay in love just as well, but listen to me… he or she who sees falling within those boundaries as the cause, let alone a necessity, for the lasting of such a love is not looking closely enough.

    Commonalities only help with the fall. Regardless of their similarities, those who stay in love have learned to confront its challenges, not only embrace its comforts.

    In the long term, it is ultimately those who are more dissimilar—those who have more to conquer in love—who can stand a better chance to survive the test of time… and those people are more often waiting outside our comfort zones than they are within them.

    Editor’s Note: “Five Things” is a daily series running until Feb. 15. The third thing about love, something that can be particularly difficult to explain, is coming tomorrow. Click here to read the first post, “Love is not an easy thing.” All images for the “Five Things About Love” series are courtesy of Blume Photography

    MilesMiles McClellan is the author behind the psychology, philosophy, and fiction blog How to Throw a Book. Already a graduate of the University of Georgia’s Grady College, he is a student of all things psychological and recently published his first book Vigil of the Ageless.