How Would I Answer The Question: Is Love Charismatic?
The first thing I did when I read that this was my topic for this post, was to smirk, huff, and say, “yeah right!”
Really!
That’s what I did even though I came up with this topic!
Whyyyyyyy?
Because love is imperfect.
Love isn’t always pink.
It isn’t always charming. Nope, it isn’t. We would hooooope that it was, but it isn’t.
Does love have charismatic characteristics?
Suuuuure, I would agree with that.
But my conclusion is that if love where charismatic, we would show it more often, share it more often, and spread it more often.
It would be the shiny thing we would want everybody to see.
And if everybody felt this way about love, then we would see love evvvvverywhere. Without having to squint and look for it like in a Where’s Waldo? picture.
Before you start rubbing your eyes in disbelief thinnnnnking that I’m not capable of seeing love everywhere, let me tell you that I am able to.
But why should we work so hard to see love….when we are all love, and when praaaaaactically everything is love? (More on that later).
Shouldn’t love be super easy to spot?
Shouldn’t love be staring us back in the face no matter where we look?
Shouldn’t love be the first thing we see when we wake up, the first thing we see when we check our email, go to work, drive, visit family, see our city, travel and the last thing that we see before we fall asleep?
It should be that way, but sadly, it’s not.
Wearing pink-colored glasses helps. But we should not even neeeeed to wear glasses.
Am I saying that life is ugly, gray and that it lacks love, period?
Nope. Not at all.
What I’m saying is that we could all use a little more love in our life. Let me rephrase…actually, it’s not that we could use a little more love. It’s that we neeeeed it. And there is a way to feel love more easily if we make a shift that I’ll talk about in just a second.
So Then, The Question Is: When Is Love Not Charismatic?
There are plenty of times, my darling.
As you just read, I’m not here to sugarcoat love and neither should you.
Let me give you some examples. Love is not charismatic because:
- sometimes it lures, sometimes it repels.
- sometimes it pushes you forward in life, sometimes it feeeeels like it’s pushing you back.
- sometimes it’s like the the most interesting friend, sometimes it’s like the friend who constantly puts on a show
- sometimes love brings out our light side, sometimes it brings out our dark side
- we use love and we abuse love
Have You Noticed The White Elephant In The Room?
You don’t need to take off your rose-colored glasses or squint too hard in order to find it.
Here it is:
Many times, you don’t chose love on purpose.
You leave it hanging.
Deliberately.
You go about your life. You do your own thing.
And it isn’t until you start to feel a sense of meaningless, or worse yet, experience some type of loss that you think is tragic or is really tragic that you think to yourself, “Wait a minute! Mayyyyybe it would be a good time to reconnect to love.”
And even then, you sometimes hesitate to reconnect to love.
Why??????
Because you don’t know if you’re getting all the value that you can from this thing called love. Love hasn’t fully convinced you. You’re not 100% sold on love. You don’t know if it’s worth your time or if it’s bringing you one loss after another.
You tell yourself:
- when I love I get hurt
- when I don’t love I get hurt
- love is painful
- my life is meaningless without love so why should I connect with love anyway, I’m doomed as it is.
I hate breaking it to you, but you talk nonsense to yourself.
Don’t tell me that this doesn’t sound familiar. Heck, I talk nonsense to myself too. I too lack love-security sometimes.
So before it sounds like I’m suggesting that Love is an old plush toy that we have thrown on our closet floor, let me remind you that love is always, always, always with you. In you. Available to you. No matter where you think you’ve left it or whether you think it left you.
It’s inside you, but sometimes you ignore it.
You and I often want to try our wings and be without love.
So Now That You Know That You Neglect Love, What Should You Do?
1st step: Don’t feel so guilty to the point that you lose sleep over this tonight.
2nd step: Know that regardless of the countless mistakes you’ve made (and that I’ve made), at any given moment you are doing the best you can. (Well, most of the time. 😉 )
3rd Step: While it would be logical to recommend to you that you should always choose love and for you to use love in all of your interactions, the truth is, it’s not always possible to choose love and most importantly, it’s not always smart to do so.
4th step: Probably, the most important step is to think of love as being magnetic instead of charismatic.
Why Should We See Love As Magnetic Instead of Charismatic?
Recently, I was rewatching Jonathan Field’s The Good Life Project where he interviewed Danielle LaPorte. (They are two of my favorite people by the way).
In this interview, Danielle mentioned that charisma is something that can’t be learned because it is:
- dynamic
- there’s a showmanship to it
- there can be some theatrics to it
- it can be a performance
Doesn’t sound much like the nature of love in its purest state, does it?
She said that she thinks of charisma as a talent. One that you’re either born with or you’re not.
Listen To What Danielle LaPorte Said About Magnetism
She said that magnetism:
- is largely about presence and having presence (and I add, having presence without having to make an old huge show out of it).
- is quiet
- is behind the scenes
- says “I’m here”
- says “I’m listening”
- says “I’m paying attention”
Doesn’t this description above sound more like love?
Conclusion?
While love can have some characteristics of charisma… love, more than anything is magnetic.
I would argue that it’s the most magnetic thing there is.
Think of allllll the times in your life when love has made you change your mind FOR GOOD.
Or when you did good things that you didn’t think you could do out of love.
Love is so magnetic that no matter:
- how many times we leave it hanging …
- how many times we favor the voice of our ego instead of the voice of our heart…
- how much we try to convince ourselves that we don’t need love to be happy…
…love with always win us over. Sooner or later. Always.
It’s Your Turn
What would you say? In your experience is love charismatic or is love magnetic?
Leave your comment below. I look forward to reading your comment.
