The True Meaning of Love: Personal Evolution of the Heart
Asking the Question We All Ask
What is love?
It sounds like one of those questions that should have a simple answer. And yet, when we truly sit with it, we realise how complex, layered, and deeply personal it is. Over the years, I have discussed love with almost every one of my clients—sometimes directly, sometimes hidden inside conversations about relationships, parenting, grief, happiness, or self-worth.
The true meaning of love is not a definition we memorise. It is something we grow into. Something we peel back, layer by layer, experience by experience.
Many definitions of love sound like clichés. And I often wonder—are clichés empty, or are they simply truths that are so powerful, they had to be repeated until we stopped listening?
Love as I First Understood It
In the beginning, love looked narrow to me.
I believed love lived between two people who chose each other romantically. Marriage. Partnership. Sexual attraction. A man and a woman building a life together. I didn’t question it. It was the norm, and I accepted it without resistance.
At that stage, I thought the true meaning of love felt external. Conditional. Something that happened between people, not inside me.
Looking back, it was like thinking love was a destination—rather than a journey.
When Love First Expanded: Sisters
At fifteen, everything shifted.
My relationship with my two younger sisters transformed almost overnight. Before that, I honestly hated their guts. And then—something softened. Suddenly, I felt connected to them in a way I had never felt before.
I cared for them. They cared for me.
That was the first time I truly felt love. Not romantic love. Not chosen love. But a deep, quiet bond that existed without effort.
This was my first clue that the true meaning of love had nothing to do with romance.
Love is not limited to lovers. It reveals itself wherever the heart opens.
Ronit Baras
Love Without Conditions: Becoming an Aunty
When my nephew Adam, was born, a new feeling was born with him.
He did absolutely nothing for me—and yet I was filled with joy. I thought about him constantly. I wrote his name on my notebooks. I dreamed about him. I wanted to make him happy because he made me happy simply by existing.
That’s when I realised something important:
Love has nothing to do with what the other person gives us.
Adam didn’t love me back. He didn’t even know who I was. And yet, my heart expanded.
This was love without transaction. Love without exchange.
It was also where I discovered that love sometimes comes with possession—and that learning to release control is part of loving well.
The true meaning of love took another step forward, it evolved.
Romantic Love and Attraction
Soon after Adam was born, I fell in love again—this time romantically.
Gal and I became partners, friends, lovers. There was attraction. Excitement. Desire. Emotional connection. Love, mixed with sexual tension and joy.
This relationship taught me that attraction is part of love—but it is not the whole story.
Gal is still my boyfriend. Forty-five years later.
Love evolves, but when it’s rooted deeply, it stays.
Motherhood: When Love Breaks All Limits
One of the biggest transformations in my understanding of the true meaning of love came when my daughter was born.
I loved my nephew so much that I worried there wouldn’t be space for my own child. I confused love with attention. I believed love was limited.
I was wrong.
When Eden was born, love didn’t divide—it multiplied.
It arrived like a warm soup made of joy, fear, bliss, worry, completion, and awe. Each ingredient alone might have been overwhelming. Together, they nourished me.
By the time my other children were born, I understood something profound:
Love is not scarce.
The heart does not run out. It was so true for me, it was so meaningful.
Love doesn’t get divided. It expands.
Ronit Baras
Love Beyond Distance
When I moved overseas, I learned that love is not bound by space.
I felt my family’s care across oceans. I understood, deeply, the words: There is no such place as far away. from Richard Bach’s book, “There is no such place as far away”
Love can cross oceans and transfer in space. Love travels. Love vibrates. Love connects.
This was another layer of the true meaning of love—love as presence, even in absence.
Love Beyond Life
When my son was born and died 35 hours later, love shattered every definition I had.
I loved him deeply. It was roughly 20 hours of bliss before we heard about his heart defect and that we needed to say goodbye, and I learned that love has something to do with fear of loss. My heart was full of love, even though I barely knew him. Even though he was gone.
Love taught me that grief is not the opposite of love—it is proof of it.
Later, I lost a daughter too on the 32nd week of the pregnancy. And still, love remained.
Love exists beyond time. Beyond life. Beyond reciprocity
Love doesn’t disappear with loss. It transforms.
Ronit Baras
Friendship, Acceptance, and Respect
Love appeared again in friendships. I have many of them and I absolutely love them. I love spending time with them. It was interesting to find that we enjoy our time together, but we don’t always agree with each other. We don’t necessarily have the same interests. Around them I feel safe and happy. My heart opens around them.
Women I don’t always agree with. Friends who don’t think like me. And yet—my heart opens around them.
My love for my friends added another dimension of acceptance, respect and shared joy to my love formula.
Love and happiness became deeply intertwined.
Grandmotherhood and the Power of Presence
When my granddaughter was born, (here she is in the photo, trying a hat in a shop) love introduced itself again—differently.
No, it wasn’t the same love toward my own children, it was different. It was mixed with pride, with an amazing desire to… be present.
When she was a baby and we cared for her for the day. It didn’t take me long to realize that my feelings changed with how present I was. I had millions of things to do (as we were working from home and still have millions of things to do) but every time I thought about my to-do list, I brought myself back to be present, not just in body but in mind. I guess I was lucky enough to be able to afford turning off the computer, not answering the phone and making those days with her… holy, dedicated to… love.
She gave a new meaning of love – presence. When my attention is undivided, it brought me closer to the art of… being.
Presence is the soil where love grows.
Ronit Baras
The Turning Point: Self-Love
In recent years, as my children left home, love turned inward. I discovered a new part of love – Self-love. It was born from the thought that everyone else around us is a reflection of us (I wrote a book about it called Reflections).
I asked myself, what if my love to my sisters, to my nephew, to my own boyfriend, my husband, to my daughter, my family, my dead children friends or granddaughter (I have two of them now) is just a reflection of my love towards myself?
What if loving others taught me how to love me?
I had that thought at the back of my mind for years. When my eldest daughter was born, I wrote “We bring kids to the world to learn to love… ourselves”
The cliché “you need to love yourself” is powerful because it’s true.
The true meaning of love lives inside us.
We use relationships to remember how to love ourselves.
Ronit Baras
This process made me think that at this stage of my “love” definition, much of the challenges in life, is our desire to feel love but seek it outside of us where it resided within us, emerging inside of us with the help of those reflections in our lives.
Notices that I said, “I felt warm feelings, love, caring …” which means it was inside of me and even when I said, “I felt loved” It meant that I had that feeling inside of me. I interpreted their feelings towards me as “Love.” What others do is theirs, what I take from it is mine.
Love as a State of Being
When I delved into what love means, I realized that true love is not the love that is affected by what others do.
Love is not something we chase.
Love is not something we earn.
Love has no conditions nor has to be reciprocated
It is the feeling inside that completes us, it is the feeling of home, the feeling of content and peace, a lifted feeling of caring and blissful flow, when the world ceases to exist, and we are in this total state of being.
Some say it is a lonely feeling because when we are there, we are all by ourselves, understand we are it, we are those we need to love, we are the one who love us and those who feel it. We are… it! We are in love!
I know that feeling. My book, Reflection, was about this lonely feeling and how much power it has when we can feel love, feel loved and be in love, regardless of what others do, regardless of whether others love us in return, approve of us, mock us or despise us. It is a feeling no one can take from us, once we connect to it, we know we are capable of it.
I reach this point when I feel love towards plants, my creations, animals and even towards people I don’t know. It is a genuine desire for others to feel good. It is as if love is a vibration that connects us all together. I love this feeling. It is addictive.
It is simple, all I need to do is ask myself, what about this (person, plant, creation, situation…) makes me happy? Happy for me now is the sign that love exists. If I genuinely want “the other” to be happy, I love, I’m loved, I’m in love.
In my studies of education, psychology and spirituality, love plays a big part. It is not a thing and not just one feeling, it is a state of being.
We are not born with this awareness to what love is but have to define it over and over again and go through our personal evolution of love until we reach the core of what love is and how love and happiness are intertwine in a dance of joy and pain, longing and bliss, fear and excitement like a soup or a salad that when combined are totally delicious and can be all consuming and even addictive.
There is no formula for happiness, but what you choose to define. In the same way, love must be self-defined based on your upbringing, life experiences and awareness.
As a happiness coach, I believe happiness is a self-defined target. This is why I called my business Be Happy in LIFE. There is no “one size fits all” formula, but what you choose to define. Searching for happiness is a journey toward love. In the same way, love must be self-defined. In the same way, love must be self-defined based on your upbringing, life experiences and awareness.
The true meaning of love cannot be borrowed. It must be lived.
This is my own journey to finding the true meaning of love. I don’t think this process will ever end but what I do know that we must constantly define it so we can be aware of the state we are in.
I highly recommend every person to go through the process of defining what love is for yourself until you reach this love state, towards yourself and all those around you.
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