Learning to Love

You may not believe it but the moment I started thinking for myself, I found it hard to love. It was difficult to love my family, my friends or even myself. I started with quite a dry heart.

The only thing I could effortlessly love was, a boy. Whether it was my kpop bias, or my crush. I loved them more than I loved my family.

At first I was okay with this. It was fun, talking about boys and not thinking about what really matters like my family or my studies. But as my brain's frontal lobe (it's where our thoughts are made) started maturing, I found this disgusting. But my condition wasn't going to change by itself. I had to do something to turn things around. To add more volume to my heart.

This is where I learnt to love. I loved the easy and maybe disgusting things first, then I used that feeling to love something that I want to love. Why? Because no matter who or what we love, the love itself is just the same feeling. So we can manipulate the love to go wherever we want it to go. Sounds incredible doesn't it?

Okay, maybe that was hard to digest. I'll give you an example.

As I told you, at first, I loved my crush more than my family. So I know what loving my crush felt like. But the important thing is, you have to venture deep into your feelings. Like, what are you willing to do for him or... I think I have to study further about this. The gist is, search into YOUR love, what makes love, love. How do you know that it's love?

When you finally get it, use that on the things that you want. In this case I used it on my family. Like, if loving my crush means I want to bake cookies for him, I'll bake cookies for my family. If loving my bias means I want to sacrifice my time for him, I'll sacrifice my times for my family. Soon, your brain will be tricked into thinking 'ah, so I love my family.'

You have to get what love means and start with the action. Sooner or later, the love will come and you'll be happier knowing that you naturally love your family.

It may not be the same case for everyone. Maybe not everyone wants to love their family that much, but for me, I have this image of me that I want to become. And in that image, I'm a person who prioritizes my family more than other people. And every second, I work hard to become this ideal image of myself. I'm chasing the illusion of me that I myself created. Disclaimer : of course, everything comes from Allah.

And the point of this post is, loving Allah. It's hard to love Allah, right? Maybe someone finds it easy, but for me it's very difficult. To keep Allah in mind all the time, to love Allah more than your parents...

but your brain can be tricked. To love Allah, I use every ounce of love that I have, every kind of how love should be, and try loving Allah.

So when I was younger, I had a crush. I thought about him all the time. But then this penceramah said, "If you love Allah, you should be thinking of him all the time."

And I thought, oh, just like how I thought of my crush. So I tried to think of Allah all the time, even when I'm doing bad things. I thought of how Allah would hate me, and how I shamelessly live on this earth while ignoring His orders. Anyhow, I just think of Allah.

I'm not sure whether the love for Allah has already existed in my heart or not, but sooner or later, I believe it will come.