Sometimes loving is hard. Perhaps that’s because love is a choice, not an emotion, as Richard Rohr says. He also says love is who you are.
I sometimes look at my own thoughtlessness, jealousy, contempt, or self-centeredness and wonder how this can be so, but maybe we miss the point when we confuse these tendencies for our selves. As Jim Finley puts it, there is an invincible preciousness at our center that nothing we or anyone else does can touch. “Nothing less than love has the power to name who you are,” according to Finley.
Even when we believe that Love is bringing us into being, accepting the reality that love is our being requires a terrifying leap. Our faults are knowable, measurable, and don’t change that much. This self is in control and controllable.
Love is infinite, eternal, ever constant and ever changing, ever evolving, ever giving itself away as new and different forms. It is unknowable, unpredictable, unexpected, mysterious.
It’s easier in this world to stick with what is known. Easier but deadly because what is not love is not real. I am that am, God says. Love is. So anything that is not love isn’t.
What does it mean to make the choice that is love? Nothing less than a conscious participation in our own becoming, which is an inextricable part of the universal becoming. Every smile, every kind word, every nanosecond of patience with an exasperating child—given or received—creates the world. Every act of forgiveness; every thrill at the beauty of a tree, a song, a painting—given and received—creates us.
Love is an ever-present invitation. The preciousness at the center of our being and of all being calls to us. Every moment offers another chance to choose to listen.
Being Finite 
I also have a sense of faith that our small acts of daily love can have a significant impact on our world.
I think there is a spectrum of love that spans from acts of will, or choices, all the way to deep, instinctive emotional responses. At times it arises with its own great momentum, at others it requires some seriously heavy lifting. Perhaps love is endlessly complex or varied in its expressions.
The Eskimos are said to have many words for different varieties of snow. Love does not often lend itself to one word descriptions, but I wonder if some form of enhanced vocabulary could help to deepen our comprehension. I guess that is something poetry sometimes wrestles with.
Thanks for expanding this, Markus. Yes, of course it is both/and not either/or. I like the idea of creating a more nuanced vocabulary.
Thought about this all day. : ) Love is a feeling. Love is not a thought. I think it depends on how one defines a feeling. It is not necessarily something you have to wait around for until it comes on you. Feelings can be a choice. That doesn’t mean they are not feelings. And all choices aren’t possible. Abraham-Hicks talks about a ladder of feelings. If you are at the bottom of the ladder in depression you can’t just choose to be at the top of the ladder, at joy. But you can choose to be one step higher, and keep choosing that until you can feel love.