UnConditional Love

A friend of mine told me she has loved her brother and dad immensely. TheY are both, unfortunately, no more.

I asked her. If she had a baby whom she would want her baby to take after, her brother or father. She thought for a while and told me "neither". Both the father and brother had negative traits, she said to me, and hence her response.

That set me thinking.

If they had such negative traits how could she have loved them so much. Something didn't add up.

After a couple of days I thought i found the answer. If she had loved them the way I would, evaluated every part of their nature, then she would definitely have wanted her child to be like them. This is conditional love.

I thought she didn't evaluate this way primarily. She loved some aspects of her brother and father which were truly nice. But they also had other aspects which were not so appealing. But my friend's love for her father and brother was not conditional primarily. It was more unconditional. As a result of which she overlooked their bad traits when she loved them. But would definitely not overlook them when it was about her baby. 

Same way, couple of other friends said they admired me immensely but I found they certainly didn't want to become like me. I thought their admiration for me was shallow. How could you admire someone but not want to be like them..

The baby episode helped me figure this out. They admired one part of me, not the whole of me. To want to be like me they had to like the whole of me, which they didn't.

Bottom-line:

When people love you or admire you, they may still not want themselves or their babies to be like you. This is difficult for me to fathom.