At the core of who I am there is love. Love has been a theme in my life from a very young age.
I guess it helps that my father named me Vuyisani Love Lebese when I was born. Yes, that is my middle name, and it is not translated from the African names, Lerato, Rirhandzu or Lufuno, it stands just like that in my ID – L.O.V.E. This name implies that my factory setting is based in and rooted in love, that the core of who I am is based on the principles of loving and being loved.
I have always understood that my happiness comes from loving, accepting and treasuring myself, but also from loving, understanding and accepting those who share my space. My mother always says there is nothing more powerful than love and good manners (I try to uphold these principles). The most powerful of all love is the ability to love one self. Self-love is not arrogance and has nothing to do with vanity, it is seeing and understanding who I am, my flaws, but also my virtues. It is the ability to love all of me regardless of how the outside world perceives or understands me. It is getting to know who I am instead of contemplating what I am.
It is letting go of the ego that comes with my standing in my family, where I work, what I drive, where I live, who my friends are or who I date. It is seeing myself outside of all of that… pure and raw and still loving that person. I will never lie and say that I do not stumble and forget these principles, like everyone else in the world, I forget who I am at times and live in the world of my ego. I start to believe my own hype and forget that who I am is not tied into all these labels given to me by society.
Conversations with my grandmother, the wonderful and ever wise Dinah Golele, have taught me that the only way to truly love another person unconditionally is to love yourself unconditionally. You cannot give what you do not have. Give yourself the best of you, do not reserve the best parts of your spirit for the public stage and for others to consume. And when you have learned that you are not perfect, that you falter and fail, but are no less deserving of love, you will be able to do the same for others.
You will see their shortcomings and understand that they are human in the same ways that make you human and they are deserving of love too. Understanding, empathy and compassion are the by-products of love. Love is deliberate, it cannot be implied, it is a verb and requires an action. The ability and the capacity to love makes us human, it is the driving force behind who we are and who to become. I live my life according to this understanding I have of love and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
