Back To Love w/ Harlen

What is love, to you? 

Ideally, love is a state of being. It's not about reciprocity, but more about sort of an unconditional appreciation and understanding for the way that things are and the way people are. 

How did you come to define/understand it? How do you define it for yourself now? 

When we were young, we had this idea of love (in a trivial way) where it was like “I love your pants”. In our teens, through watching Disney movies and popular rom coms, we painted a “story” picture of love. My current understanding of love is this state of I don't want to say nirvana, but kind of. I think that came from my travels in India, studying with some spiritual teachers out there and then kind of doing further yogic readings. There's this book called “I Am That”...seeing yourself in everything and seeing that everything is also in you. I think pop media has a one dimensional romantic idea of love which is a bit unsustainable. 

How do you like to be loved? What is your love language?

I mean I think fundamentally if we’re defining love between people then it's like the seeking of understanding which is why I think that there are different, but equal types of love between romantic partners and friends. I don't think one is less than the other because they are rooted in this unconditional acceptance of oneself and another person. 

How do you like to love other people? 

Loving other people is being there for other people and showing appreciation for them. 

Why is love important to you? 

Love is the reason why people live: I think if you live your life for money that's a pretty soulless and empty endeavor right there. Love makes you appreciative, it brings you joy: when you love nature, you're in communion with nature...you're in communion with everything. When people lose sight of that, they lose sight of everything. 

Why do you think we struggle with expressing and/or receiving love? 

I think we're conditioned to think that love needs to look a certain way and that showing vulnerability is a sign of weakness. We’re uncomfortable with being put in a position where we can be perceived as weak especially when people start to worry in a romantic capacity that the other person doesn't reciprocate the same level of care or interest. I think a lot of that is just internal hangups that we’ve been taught by the media and our own observations of relationships. When we see people who are fighting or hot and cold -  all these sort of dramatic things, it makes us feel afraid. We’re afraid of being put in positions that can potentially hurt us. 

How do you think we could all be more loving towards one another? How do you plan to continue loving yourself and others during this time of Coronavirus and a social justice revolution?

Extending empathy and understanding that we’re all connected. I think people are reckless with people when we think that what we do to other people doesn't affect us, but even being rude or inconsiderate to someone, it creates negativity in us. Everything is the same, we’re all the same and if we recognize that then it helps us to be more loving because then we can see ourselves in other people. Black Americans in this country have always faced the issues that are suddenly now coalescing into this social justice movement, but I think the pandemic gave people more time to assess and critically think about things that they were able to previously gloss over. Even though we’re all the same, we've gone through different things. People have different traumas and the pandemic and this period of social unrest/change is forcing people to look at things that are going to make them uncomfortable. 

What kind of love are you tapping into right now? 

I don't think for me it's any different than it normally is. Re-grounding and re-centering is how you find your sense of love. Ideally, I think love is infinite in abundance, but given the circumstances people can feel depleted at this time. I think re-grounding and re-centering in the truth is acknowledging that we’re all connected, that we’re all the same and finding meaning in that. Otherwise, if we think everything is insignificant, then what is the purpose of life. And, maybe that's why people look to religion to find deeper purpose and meaning, but finding yourself is at the center of love and connectedness.