Is love just a survival instinct?

Do we only love our children because they keep our genes in existence? And our parents because they gave us life? Our partners because we can procreate with them or together raise children?

This seems like a rather cold, selfish way to think about love but when I see the way that we often love only the people around us and struggle to extend that love to life as a whole I often wonder.

Do we only love the people who sustain us? Is that actually love?

I am vegetarian for many reasons, but the main reason is love.

I try to act out of love and whenever there is a living creature that is vulnerable to my actions I try to put love before my own desires.

But choosing to love all life hurts.

My heart can break and I can have fits of helpless rage when I think of the hardship animals experience at the hands of people. Not to mention the hardships people experience at the hands of other people.

If we choose to love all life then every tragedy is our tragedy. Every death our death. And it is exhausting.

Take a new pet for instance. If you bring a cat into your life and learn to love it you will have many years of joy and companionship. But you will also be signing yourself up for sadness once the cat passes away. With that in mind, would you choose not to experience love because one day you will lose it?

This experience is even stronger with having a child. Parents will have so much love for their children but if they lose them they would experience one of the worst kinds of pain it is possible to experience in this life. But so many people find that risk worth taking and I agree that it is.

It is the same when we choose to love all life.

If we make love a motivating force in our everyday actions then we create, or maybe just tap into, a fountain of love inside ourselves—a fountain that pours back into the world. We become a source of love that can nourish not only the lives around us but also our own lives.

The wealth that love provides is tangible inside our hearts. It does not need to be reciprocated. The act itself draws out the wealth.

This is our evolution as a species. Our bodies and minds evolve but so do our souls.

The soul evolves towards sustaining love the the body evolves towards sustaining life.

Love is a leap of evolution so great that it moves a human-like animal roaming the earth into an species that is able to touch the heavens in their own hearts.

Love is there.

It does not hide from any person.

If we act out of love, love will always appear.

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Relephant reads:

A Love Letter to the World.

A Spiritual Approach to Eating.

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Artist & Author: Mike Medaglia

Editor: Khara-Jade Warren

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