(a paraphrase of 1 corinthians 13)
​ 
Real love is patient and kind. 
It is open to change and growth.
It accepts others for who they are, where they are,
Not who we want them to be.
 
Ego requires an apology.
It demands others be accountable to us.
Ego holds on to past hurts,
Believing it has to teach others how to treat us.
 
Real love forgives, forgets, and moves on.
It gives others the space to grow at their own pace.
Real love frees us from our inner prison of judgment, fear, and anger.
 
Ego stirs the pot.
It fills our minds and relationships with resentments and bitterness.
It shakes its fist and points its finger,
Spewing seeds of discord and dysfunction.
 
True love turns the other cheek.
It accepts the imperfection of others and ourselves.
It invites us to inner growth.
It teaches us the depth and breadth, the strength of unconditional love.
 
Ego twists the truth.
It disguises itself as love.
It is self-serving and self-centered.
It sees the world with blinders on.
Ego is filled with vanity and blame.
 
True love, unconditional love, does not keep score.
It doesn’t count how many times you’ve visited.
It doesn’t trifle itself with whether you served our meal with good china or paper plates. 
It’s happy and content with the ways things are.
It doesn’t push the river.
It trusts that life and love unfolds.
 
True loves takes its blinders off.
It sees things from all perspectives.
It puts childish ways aside,
Seeking truth with the adult eyes of Wisdom.
 
 
True love opens our hearts.
It quiets our inner victim.
It hushes our inner judge,
Allowing us to embrace the freedom to love without conditions or expectations.
 
.
True love wins, eventually.
But only after we pull the mask off our misperceptions of love.
 
 
There are in the end only three things in this life that matter,
Only three things that bring us happiness,
 Three things, which overcome our fidgety, fickle egos.
 
These three things are the thread, which connects us to each other in this world and the next:  faith, hope, and love. 
 
And the most powerful,
The richest and strongest of these,
The mirror that reflects back the true image of who we are, and have been created to be,
Is love…
Unconditional love.
 
 
—brian j plachta
www.brianplachta.net