Living with the intention to love simply.

I circled around a few questions before settling on this one: how can I live a little lighter, with more peace, take life a little easier, without forgetting to enjoy it?

Live with the intention to love simply.

How do I actually put that intention into practice? I’ll admit, I still struggle with that more often than not.

The first thing I had to understand and accept was that I am, first and foremost, a biological being. I have a body, a nervous system, hormones, instincts, and reflexes. I get hungry. I get scared. I desire things, I form attachments, I seek pleasure, and I avoid pain. My biology and evolution have equipped me to survive. My heart can start racing before I even know why. A single comment can irritate me in a fraction of a second. In other words, my body doesn’t wait for me to finish thinking before it reacts to whatever life puts in front of me.

And then there is my personal history. The person I am today has been shaped by my family, my culture, my upbringing, my relationships, my successes, my failures, my wounds, and also by the lessons and conclusions I’ve drawn from all of them, consciously or not. Some of this helps protect me from danger, humiliation, and pain. Some of it also helps me seek the love and approval of others: parents, family, friends, partners, colleagues, and so on.

I came to realize that I don’t simply see reality as it is. I see it through my own filters.

I don’t just see what is. I also see what I am.

I soon noticed that, for me, avoiding pain mattered far more than seeking pleasure. So I built walls and barriers between myself and life. There was also a little instruction manual that seemed to come with being a man, even though nobody had ever officially handed me a copy: be strong, stay in control, grit your teeth, and keep going.

Those defenses served me. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But they came at a price. In trying to shut the door on the possibility of being hurt, I also shut out many of the things that could bring me joy. I hadn’t understood that. By closing myself off from pain, I was also closing myself off from part of life itself.

That’s when I came up against something I hadn’t really expected. What I lacked was the courage to let life touch me.

I had a choice to make between the image of the man I wanted to project and the experience of being fully alive. I chose to accept the tears when they come and the laughter when it comes. To be afraid when I’m afraid without being ashamed of it. To be sad when I’m sad without immediately trying to fix my sadness. To be happy when I’m happy without needing to know why. To let myself feel, lower the walls I had built and, above all, stop trying to protect myself from life before anything has even happened. In other words, to allow myself to be vulnerable.

That also means giving up the attempt to control what isn’t mine to control. Faced with uncertainty, my mind wants an answer. Anything that might bring some order to all of this… If everything happens for a reason, then maybe what I can’t control feels a little less uncertain. The problem is, I don’t know if that’s true. And that’s where I find myself today when it comes to God.

I don’t know whether God intervenes in my life, whether there is a plan, or even whether the words I use to speak about God correspond to anything I am capable of understanding. But I can’t honestly say there is nothing either. I have experienced and felt things that keep me from reaching that conclusion. For me, there is something about the experience of life, consciousness, and Love that I cannot simply dismiss as nothing.

So, for now, my answer is simply: I don’t know. Strangely enough, those three words bring me far more peace than all the answers I’ve tried to put in their place. I can believe, hope, and pray without pretending to know.

I also don’t want to use God as a way of avoiding what is mine to face. If someone is suffering in front of me, their suffering is real. If I’ve hurt someone, what I did is real. If a decision is mine to make, then it’s mine to make. I can ask God for help if I feel the need, but I’m no longer asking God to play my part for me.

I can look at what is in front of me, use my intelligence, my resources, and my courage, do my best, and make the decision that seems right to me. After that, we’ll see.

That part is still much harder for me to accept. I spend an impressive amount of time trying to control things over which I have absolutely no control: anticipating, worrying, replaying the past, imagining conversations, wishing someone would think differently, predicting what might go wrong and, with a little talent, then worrying about what might go wrong with whatever might go wrong.

This is where, for me, to love simply begins. It isn’t a method. It isn’t some new and improved version of myself that I have to become, and it certainly isn’t another set of rules I have to follow properly. It’s an intention.

When something happens, I know my biology may react before anything else, and then my mind jumps in with all its unconscious filters. I’m learning to breathe through those more emotionally charged moments. I try to accept what is there and simply feel whatever is moving through me.

Feeling something doesn’t mean handing it the controls. A feeling can be there without making the decision for me.

And then, as much as I’m able, I try to choose my response from a place of love.

My intention, really, is to stop protecting myself in advance from whatever life might bring.

So I try to remain open to life and enjoy it fully. A good meal is already a good meal. A laugh is already a laugh. Being with someone I love doesn’t need to become anything more than that. A day when absolutely nothing happens can be a very good day. I don’t need to wait until I’ve understood everything, fixed everything, and made everything safe before allowing myself to be happy.