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First things first—Love isn’t a noun. Love is a verb revealed through actions, not words.

Before I continue, I’d like to share the ways I learned about love from songs.

Released by The Playmates when I was eight years old, “What Is Love?” told me it’s Five feet of heaven in a pony tail. The cutest pony tail that sways with a wiggle when she walks. I had a ponytail, but I was still a few inches away from being five feet tall and finding love.

Paul Anka sang “Puppy Love,” which I was certain had nothing to do with the way I felt about Jackie, the puppy we got when I was eight.

I was nine years old when Steve Lawrence sang, Thought I was in love before And then you moved in next door pretty blue eyes. He saw her from a window, would sit by her doorstep so they could meet, and asked her to come out So I can tell you what I have to say That I love you, love you pretty blue eyes.

The lesson? All I needed was blue eyes and then a stranger would love me. My eyes were brown, so what chance did I have?

According to Merry Clayton’s 1963 “Shoop Shoop Song,” the only way to know if someone loves you is not in eyes or sighs. If you wanna know if he loves you so it’s in his kiss.

Listening to B. J. Thomas sing “Hooked On A Feeling,” in 1968, led me to search for feelings so I’d be high on believing that you’re in love with me.

Of course, there were many other songs during those formative years, but I think you get the idea of how songs convinced me that all I needed was a certain look and lots of feelings in order to know love.

I won’t go into all the songs I listened to after breakups (Skeeter Davis, “The End of the World,” Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond, “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore,”  The Carpenters, “I Won’t Last a Day Without You,” etc.) that were ready to pierce arrows into my broken heart and prove I’d never be okay without that one person. Filled with feelings, albeit mostly heartbreak, proved how much I cared, even if I hadn’t known that before the person was gone.

Then a miracle—Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” offered the possibility of existing without a human appendage to rely on. As long as I know how to love I know I’ll stay alive. Freed of believing I had to love someone in order to be whole, I realized that feeling something for another person does not necessarily mean love.

Love is more than what you feel, it’s what you do.

Love isn’t what you say, it’s what you do.

Love isn’t great chemistry, it’s what you do.

It’s easy to have chemistry with some cute, fit, sexy guy or gal, but what about years later when body parts start their descent towards the floor, the man with the beautiful head of hair is bald, or you both have packed on a few extra pounds? If you’ve loved well, you will share a more profound chemistry because it will have come from deep friendship and love.

So how do we find love? The first place to look for love may surprise you. Love isn’t waiting for you out there somewhere, and another person doesn’t embody it.

Before you seek a loving relationship with someone, search inside and love yourself.

For a long time, I didn’t understand that love had to exist inside us and had to be for ourselves before we could truly love another. I recently finished the manuscript for a memoir I’ve worked on for years, and as I sought to understand my unsuccessful search for love, my writing revealed what I had to learn so I could love myself enough before I could truly love another person.

Love is not need. Love is not looking for someone to fill our emptiness or make us whole.

The song, “People,” from Funny Girl, is beautiful, but the advice Barbra Streisand sang was wrong:

With one person, one very special person

A feeling deep in your soul

Says you were half now you’re whole

It’s no one else’s job to make us whole or fix our lives. We must do that for ourselves. It starts and ends with loving ourselves enough to not get in our own way when it comes to fulfilling our dreams. Loving ourselves enough so we can allow others to live their best lives without expecting them to compromise in order to make us comfortable.

The first time I listened to “The Greatest Love of All,” sung by Jane Olivor, and later by Whitney Houston, I knew I’d heard a song that finally told the truth:

I found the greatest love of all

Inside of me

Learning to love yourself

It is the greatest love of all

I omitted the lyrics that finding the greatest love is easy to achieve. I wish it were easy, but if you’d experienced abuse or knew a day where you felt no one in the world loved you, then finding the love inside is hard because you don’t know what it is. But I also know it can be done, and the adventure of searching and finding love inside ourselves is one of the greatest journeys of a lifetime.

If you haven’t yet packed your bags and started your journey, what’s stopping you?

I could write a lot more about love. Instead, I will stop now and invite you to share about love in your life so we can all learn from each other. What was your music of love?

Jane Olivor The Greatest Love of All

 

P.S. I guess I do have more I want to share. I spent a lifetime looking for love armed with the wrong ideas about love, so I made poor choices and connected to men who weren’t right for me. I didn’t love myself so how could I love another person for the right reasons? Finally, at 53 years old, I found love because I was unwilling to fall in love with the wrong person, and willing to be alone the rest of my life unless I was certain I was making a wise choice. Because of this decision, I gifted myself the most profound love of my life. Bobby and I have been together for 20 years and married 16, and never a day goes by that I’m not grateful. I never before understood love could grow into something so much deeper and more profound than what my early life and songs had promised.

 

 

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