Love

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves, without any insistance that they satisfy you
Wayne Dyer

This is what unconditional love is. But this kind of unconditional love is, in my experience, very rare. Neale Donald Walsch in "Conversations with God" says that people are so unfamiliar with unconditional love they can't even imagine God loving us in this way. Even when a mother has a newborn baby, which is probably the closest to unconditional love that we ever get, as soon as that baby becomes able to control their actions and make choices, the mother is telling him what to do in order to please her. Of course we are constantly telling babies what to do just for their own safety, but I think there is also a lot of "do this just to please me" too.

I grew up in a very controlling family. We had to do what our parents thought we should do, and that was the end of it. We were "good" children, because we didn't really have a choice. We simply were not allowed to experiment during adolescence with who we wanted to be. I have always struggled with that because I am not, and can never be, what my parents, and later my ex-husband, wanted me to be. I still yearn to be accepted for the way I am, instead of the way someone thinks I should be.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves, without any insistance that they satisfy you. This kind of unconditional love demands a great deal of maturity and emotional healthiness. More than most of us have. It comes from not needing other people to satisfy your wants and needs because you love yourself enough to be willing and able to satisfy your own wants and needs. Only when you unconditionally love yourself can you unconditionally love others. And that is the only kind of love that is really meaningful to any of us.