Guest Blogger JoAnn Smith Ainsworth - Unconditional Love—the World Needs a Greater Supply

We all need unconditional love; that is, showing love towards others regardless of their actions or beliefs. For Happily Ever After in life or in a novel, we need to give along with receiving.

As I look back over the years, it seems to me that we have become more and more judgmental. When I was young, there was such a thing as “an accident”. Now if there is an accident, the public demands finger pointing. Some one must be accountable, even though most things in life are, to me, a culmination of a variety of decisions made over a period of time by a variety of people.

Perhaps the accident was not the fault of the driver who slammed on the brakes. Perhaps it was because a driver cut in front with insufficient room and the driver behind had put off having brakes repaired and the driver at the tail end was distracted by family problems and couldn’t react in time. A variety of circumstances may come together to cause an accident, but still it is not called “accidental”. Finger pointing requires some one person to be responsible.

Our interactions with loved ones can be just as judgmental.

With finger pointing in families, the spouse is told, “If you would just change this and this and this, then I would be happy.” I’m here to tell you that you would not. You would find the change was not sufficient or not exactly as you pictured it or you found that more change was needed. The only place where happiness is generated is within ourselves. Changing our attitudes toward unconditional love is how HEA arrives. And the reverse must happen. We need to receive unconditional love so that we are accepted for “ourselves” at whatever stage of life we’re at.

My latest release, THE FARMER AND THE WOOD NYMPH, explores this finger pointing and this demanding that the other person change. Ernest is a farmer. He finishes A before he starts B. He plans and schedules his life. Lilah is his opposite. She may start with A, but it won’t be long before she’ll try out E, take a taste of B or C and in the end come back to finish A. Each is positive the other person has to become more like them to be able to live together.

In the end they discover that opposites attract for a reason—they complete each other. To live in harmony, they must accept their life partner’s differences and see how those differences balance out the whole family unit.

You may not agree, but I’ve found that each of us has certain life lessons to learn. When others impose their ideas of what we should be learning at what stage in our lives, their imposition of viewpoint can create havoc. With unconditional love, we let our loved ones change at their own pace. Give your loved one a break. Decide to interact with them with a love that does not impose conditions.

In our love stories, the heroine and the hero change and grow within themselves to arrive at the Happily Ever After commitment. They learn we don’t control love from the outside. We grow it from within when we learn to cherish our loved ones for who they are.

Have you had the same experiences as I have had? If not, what did you do to succeed at love?

When JoAnn Smith Ainsworth carried wood as a pre-teen so her Great Aunt Martha could stoke up the iron stove to prepare dinner, she wasn’t thinking, “I could use this in a novel someday.” Yet, the skills she learned from her horse-and-buggy ancestors translate into backdrops for her historical romance and paranormal suspense novels. Her debut medieval romantic suspense novels received 4 stars from RT Book Reviews. For more, visit http://www.joannsmithainsworth.com.

Twitter @JoAnnAinsworth or @JoAnnParanormal or Facebook’s JoAnn Smith Ainsworth Fan Page.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=joann+smith+ainsworth

Contact her at joannparanormal@gmail.com.

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