The Simplest Way to Love Your Life

"Do you actually love the life you have?"

This is the question my sister asked me just the other day as we sat across from one another at our common meeting place.

My reaction somewhat surprised me given this is what I stand for and talk about nearly each week.

I didn't respond with an emphatic, "Of course I do!" I didn't respond with some angry or jaded response either.

I don't NOT love the life I have.

It's actually pretty incredible how wonderful my life is. I have everything I could ever need -- a supportive family, loving friends, a warm bed, so much food that I need to "watch what I eat," and too many freedoms and opportunities to list.

But I started to think more about this question and the way I answered (and didn't answer, to be precise). I notice my tendency to shy away from expressing my life as "great!" or "simply wonderful." Instead I lean towards things are "okay" or "not bad."

Why is this?

What are my beliefs around this? What does it even mean to "love the life I have"? These are the questions that came to mind after being asked this question so directly.

Would I be lying if I were to say that I love my life?

A part of me thinks yes because I have this belief that my life needs to look a certain way before I can LOVE the life I have. You know, I can only love my life if I'm earning so much and living in a certain place and making money doing what I love and married to a certain type of person.

Another part of me wonders if I carry around a belief that if I say that I love my life then I am misleading myself and others or that it might come of as "bragging" and cause separation. I mean, we all know just how much we as humans enjoy coming together over a drink and a nice bitch-fest.

If I love my life, what am I able to bitch about? Won't that just push people away or have them think I'm trying to pretend things are better than they really are?

And isn't it interesting that I would even think that is how it would come off?

That some of us might actually think someone is walking around wearing "rose-colored glasses" because they say they love their life or that we might think they are somehow being false or pretentious?

All we need to do in order to love the life we have is choose to love it. And then express that to others.

It's that second part that is currently tripping me up.

Just because I choose to love my life doesn't mean there won't be moments when it's difficult or uncomfortable or doesn't look the way I might have thought.

Just because I choose to love my life doesn't mean I can't practice compassion and understanding of others' situations.

Just because I choose to love my life doesn't mean I'm delusional or pretending like things are different than they are.

To love my life means I am willing to love myself fully and honor everything within me that is also within you. It is having a willingness to love that which doesn't feel good sometimes or meet my expectations or look the way I want it to look.

It's an acceptance, a surrendering, a letting go.

This is what it now means to me to "love the life I have." And this is my practice.

Not only to experience this love for my life but also to express it to others. Not because I want to brag or have it seem other than what it is. But rather to give others a permission to love their life just as it is.

It is once we feel and express this love for the life we have that we can then experience more of all those good things we are here to experience -- peace, love, joy, abundance.

So even though I've been touting this motto for over a year, it is becoming really clear to me why it found me, and just how much I have been keeping myself from experiencing it.

It found its way to me because it expresses a deep Truth that I wholeheartedly believe. It's just that the Truth wanted to be expressed through me before I was ready to fully practice it.

So, now if someone were to ask me, "Do you actually love the life you have?" I intend to speak boldly and honestly from my heart and say, "Yes, I do. Because I choose to accept and surrender to the Oneness of all things."