Unconditional Love

Don't look for unconditional love —you'll be disappointed. Instead, try to find the person you can love unconditionally.

This is a classic reversal: much the same as Viktor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning flipped the existential, "What's the point of life?" to "Consider yourself being judged by life and ask what you must do."

Reversals reveal the limits of a question or methodology. In the example above...

• If you find a person you can love unconditionally, great: that's all you expected, goal accomplished.
• If you don't find them, then you question why there isn't anyone worth loving unconditionally...
  • is it because there's no one worth loving unconditionally?
  • or perhaps your expectations on who is worth loving is unrealistic
  • maybe you can't love unconditionally because you do expect something back

The truth is all of us want unconditional love, to be cared for, but sometimes caring and loving someone else unconditionally is the more meaningful pursuit.

It should be obvious by now that "fun, easy, and getting what I want" doesn't equal "happiness".

Ask a parent if raising a kid is easy and fun and that they always get what they want from their kid and the answer will be an obvious no. But for a good percentage of parents, if you ask them if the experience was worth it, they will say: yes. Worth = meaning, fullfilment, contentment, not a regretted decision.