Love as an act of seeing

Notice. See. Pay attention.

Above all, love is paying attention.

Love is an act of noticing. Of seeing. Seeing not with criticism nor with flattery nor with lust to possess, to control and use, but seeing what is really there; accepting it, appreciating it, seeking to understand it and listen to it – perhaps learn from it. Above all, love is paying attention. It is attending, deeply and fully and without prejudice.

Art, photography, poetry can be acts of noticing. Showing what is there but has gone unnoticed, paying attention to what has never before been attended to. It requires concentration, effort, time. It requires a focus on the other instead of on myself.

In love we see deeper. We see things about a person that perhaps no-one else has noticed, no-one has ever appreciated.

Lust is about possession and control – what you can get, can suck from the other; it is vampiric and parasitic; it objectifies, reduces, demeans, dehumanises. Love by contrast liberates, celebrates, magnifies, gives freely and unstintingly.

Perhaps we are all whispering 'Notice. Notice me. See me as I am, not as who I seem to be, not who I pretend to be. See past the bravado or the shyness, the belligerence or the false niceness, to the real person who lies hidden beneath, perhaps seen by no other person. See and still accept, see and yet do not condemn.'

Neither do I condemn you – now go and sin no more. Perhaps the only way that could be possible would be to know that we are truly, fully known and yet still fully loved.

The world is crying out meaning upon meaning for those who can see and hear, who notice, who can understand. And the world is crying out to be seen, noticed, attended to, understood. To be loved.