The 5 pillars to a well-lived life: Love

This is part 3 of a 5 part series looking into the 5 pillars of a well-lived life.

Outside of water, food and air, probably the one other thing we need to live a meaningful life would be love and companionship. The comfort of love, and the idea that you’re everything to someone else, and that someone else means the world to you. I think that’s what drives the human spirit forward.

What is love?

If you were to go out and ask different people what love is and what it means, I bet you’ll get all sorts of very different answers. The beautiful thing is, they’re all right.

• Love is passion
• Love is patience
• Love is growing together
• Love is that heady gushy feeling when you’re together
• Love is vulnerability
• Love is sharing
• Love is respect
• Love is sacrifice
• Love is acceptance
• Love is purpose

and so much more.

Types of Love

Obviously, like how love makes you feel different each day, love also comes in many different forms, reflecting our very human need to experience love across the spectrum of our lives.

Romantic love

Let’s get this out of the way as the most obvious form of love whenever people talk about it. Our desire to connect with that one special person, that life partner. When you have someone to hold and touch and connect, someone to come home to everyday, share a life and visualise your future together, that’s an immensely powerful force of life that can literally change the course of your future.

Familial love

This is love of family and close friends. We’re all social creatures, and we all seek love and acceptance from family and friends. While you might think it’s romantic to have a “Us vs the World” type of love where you and your partner run off and seek solace in only each other, and not bother about family and friends, you just need to watch Romeo+Juliet to see how that worked out.

Loving what you do / Doing what you love

Either you’re lucky to be loving what you do, or you take up a hobby or passion and do what you love when you have the time to do so. I love writing, so this blog fuels my passion. Reading, skiing, diving, traveling, whatever your passions may be, stoke and fuel them.

Self love

In order to really move forward and love others fully, you first have to come to accept and love yourself. Nobody is perfect. You’re perfectly fine the way you are. Unless you’re a serial killer or an absolute dick of course.

Work on your flaws, but also work on loving yourself and giving yourself a pat on the back for being alive. You had to be a champion to be alive in the first place. So you earned it.

At the end of the day, love, with all its ups and downs, are what makes us grow and mature.

If we haven’t loved, have we even lived?