Unconditional

"The measure of love is to love without measure" - Unknown

Unconditional love and unconditional trust, these are usually seen as dangerous aren't they? Two things that people fear delving into, even though it is supposed to be a mark of great bonding and friendship. I suppose it is understandable, who would want to trust someone completely without expecting them to be a hundred percent honest with you all the time, right? Who would want to love without expecting the same magnitude of love back from them? It would not be fair for ourselves to give our all to someone and have them give only a margin of enthusiasm as return.

Why? Why are we so accustomed to expecting an equal reciprocation? Can we not spread an emotion without needing something in return? It's strange, it has become such a norm to refuse unconditional emotion towards a person. If you truly and genuinely want to make someone feel better in a time of need, I'm pretty sure nobody would want them to suddenly start smiling, laughing and helping you with your problems. It's not a feeling that we have. We understand that in this state, this specific person cannot be the same as what they normally are and that we cannot expect the same reactions from them all the time (At least I hope we understand). What's even stranger is it isn't even a bad feeling, trusting someone unconditionally ease the burden of paranoia from your mind many times, leaving your mind free to converse entirely rather than having to worry about whether or not you should tell your friend what happened at school, wondering whether you can trust him anymore.

It's not completely baseless, nothing is I suppose. In a sense, unconditional emotion is completely handing yourself over to someone else with the hope that you will not come out of this scenario with fewer pieces of yourself than when you entered. It's handing someone a loaded gun, asking them to aim at your head but expecting, or wanting to expect that they will not pull the trigger. Giving that kind of power to someone can be frightening. Information is power and choosing to trust someone is an ordeal that may or may not cause great distress in the future. It is a way for people to feel secure, and a way to avoid their past. Some have had their trust shattered so many times that their minds simply erase the concept of trust from their mind. At that point they are but a shell of their former self, it is no way to live.

If you really think about it, it makes very little sense to believe that two people have the same capacity to keep a person's trust. We already know that everyone is in some way or form different from each other and emotions definitely change drastically from person to person. Yet when someone breaks our trust, we go into a state of thought, one that eventually leads to us believing that everyone is similar. The words "trust"and "love" spark negative memories in their mind but in every sense it is ridiculous. Why must the actions of one decide the other. Even if it were true, it may be just a mere co-incidence. I digress, what I mean to say is that you cannot love and trust two people the same way and you cannot predict what they will give in return for your dedication but we occasionally decide that they will. Personally, I feel that these two emotions are best placed without expecting anything back, simply because when you do expect, you subconsciously reduce the intensity of the emotion to compensate for that level of expectation, leading the bond with that person to be marginally weaker compared to a version of yourself where you had loved unconditionally.

At the same time, I feel as though "unconditional" may be too strong a word although I cannot place a specific word to represent the definition I need to convey. Either way, the point is simple: love and trust without expecting. If both people have this mindset and give their entirety to their friendship, then both of them will get what they needed, without even expecting it to happen. You will feel better about your bond; when the mind is free of constant need for something, it is free to enjoy something purely for what it is rather than what you gain from it.

"Life is not an investment. Love because you want to, not because you will gain something from it" - Unknown

Evan Kirby