The Dichotomy of Love

I am convinced that the beauty of love is in the dichotomy of selfishness and selflessness. Sometimes we get too caught up in the guilt that seeps into us when we are focusing on being selfless with our love. Guilt is a poison that attacks our ability to love fully which can be seen as an exchange - no, a mutually existing flow of giving and receiving. Love should flow in and out of our hearts to the people we are blessed to care for. Guilt makes our love one sided. We live in a world of commerce - we pay something and EXPECT something in return. We end up adopting this lens when we love. Sometimes we even find ourselves keeping tabs on who has loved us well so we can "return favors." Christianity teaches us to die to ourselves and give without expecting anything in return so when we are given a gift out of love, no matter the form: words of encouragement, money, acts of service, etc., we feel guilty because our selflessness makes us forget how to receive love.The guilt becomes a dam and we are left feeling empty. We feel empty because this dam makes us send acts of love out of guilt instead of the mutual gentle flow of receiving, giving, and accepting. What we may forget is that when the flow of love is not hindered by the dam of guilt, the people we love receive a gift of love as soon as we gratefully ACCEPT their love gift. That is what I mean by the mutual flow. Imagine love as a circular flow of water from one human being to another. Imagine the act of love is flowing from one person's heart to the other. Then the person sees that love gift and takes that flow into their own heart. As the heart is nourished and replenished by the love water flow, the gratefulness they experience flows back to the other persons heart replenishing them. Both hearts are then mutually loved, and replenished. The selfishness and selflessness happens at the same time when love is given, received, and appreciated. That is the beauty of the dichotomy of love. It is the most selfish and selfless act we can create. Let's love unhindered by the guilt dam and embrace the freedom we experience when we love this way.