The Love We Seek Is Already Within Us

Barriers, vulnerability, and the need to belong

Jon Soto

Dec 14, 2024

To the deep thinkers,

Welcome to the Deep Thinkers Newsletter: A collection of essays dedicated to going beyond the surface.

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At our core, humans are born with a boundless capacity for love.

Before the traumas and hardships leave their imprint on us—we exist as pure love.

But as we live and grow, we build barriers—barriers that not only block us from receiving love but also prevent us from accessing the love we have to give.

As children, we are generous, forgiving, and compassionate, but it is our lived experiences that harden our hearts over time. The painful lessons of trusting too deeply or loving too intensely, only to be left out in the cold, drive us to construct dams that hold back the river of love flowing within us.

For most, barriers start forming in childhood and are fully established by early adulthood. When others berate us for being ourselves or when love is not freely expressed in our homes, we instinctively begin to protect our hearts.

We reject vulnerability and lock away our genuine feelings. It’s a sad reality, but to remain sane, it’s often necessary that we protect our hearts.

When I think about love, and my own struggles to both accept and give it, I think back to my own childhood. I remember feeling isolated, separated, and lonely, even when I was surrounded by other people.

In my home, there was no utterance of the words "I love you” and physical touch was rare (unless of course, I was receiving a whoopin’). On some level, I knew my mom loved me, but I didn't feel loved. And so instead, I felt neglected and emotionally abandoned. To protect myself from these painful emotions, I grew skeptical of others and found solace in solitude.

I’ve realized, however, that my own barriers have held me back emotionally for a long time. And in those moments, late in the night when the weight of all that I hold in finally hits me—when emotions burst out of me like a pot boiling over—I can’t deny that my view of love has to be flawed.

Lately, I’ve been asking myself: how do I begin to undo years of conditioning that built these barriers in the first place? What does someone do if they grew up in a home where vulnerability wasn’t welcomed and now, as an adult, struggles to let love in?

Are people like me beyond saving? Is there hope for those of us so disconnected from our reservoir of love that the only future we can imagine is one of solitude or emotional detachment?

Fears, limiting beliefs, past traumas, trust issues, and a general sense of pessimism are just a few of the barriers I’ve built around myself.

Despite these barriers, I believe that change is possible. This piece is my way of trying to make sense of exactly how that change happens. I hope that what I’ve found, can help you as well.

The cost of belonging

When I am fully present and aware of my barriers, I have moments of lucid vulnerability—but this is rare for me.

I’ve had to dig deeper, delving into the depths of my emotional world to uncover the foundation of my psyche. Layer by layer, I’ve unraveled who I am, tracing the path that led me to this place of emotional unavailability.

Yet, the process is far from over. It’s an ongoing and exhausting journey, one I grapple with every day. These patterns, often rooted in childhood, are deeply ingrained and not easily undone.

From a young age, we’re taught that feeling loved requires us to assimilate into groups. We learn to think and act in certain ways to gain acceptance, equating that acceptance with love. The group embraces the version of ourselves we push to the forefront. But as children, we rarely stop to consider whether this version is authentic to who we truly are.

We just want to belong.

And over time, we want to belong so badly that we'll spend money, adopt more personas, and even forsake our values, all in the name of feeling like we are part of the crowd.

I won't tell you that you shouldn't care about belonging. It's a very human trait to want to find and be accepted by a pack. The issue is in relying on an inauthentic persona. True belonging comes not from masking who we are, but from embracing our authentic selves and finding connections that celebrate us, flaws and all.

The illusion of more

When it comes to love, we can often feel disconnected from others—driven by the belief that we need to add more to experience its radiance.

We convince ourselves to change our personalities, appearances, or even the way we speak, all while ignoring the walls we’ve built around our hearts.

We assume the problem lies with others—that they are the ones who need to change. But authentic connection begins when we tear down our barriers, allowing the falsehoods to fade away and revealing who we truly are in our rawest form. Only then can we experience the fullness of real love.

Rather than searching for love outside ourselves or depending on another to “complete” us, we must recognize that what we’re truly seeking is already within us. It’s the essence of how we are. We are love. Yet, often through no fault of our own, we become the ones who block its natural flow. Conditioned by past experiences, mistreatment, or abuse, we construct barriers to protect ourselves.

These defenses may feel necessary, even justified, but they also hinder our ability to give and receive love freely.

Nothing external prevents us from experiencing love, nor can we add anything to our lives to create it. The love we seek has always existed within us, waiting to be embraced.

As the Persian poet Rumi once said:

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

Tend to your garden first

Love is not about a warm and fuzzy feeling. It's not simply about roses or carnal signs of passion.

Love for ourselves, another person, or your deity of choice doesn't stem from a single act. It’s built over time. It takes effort and the willingness to be vulnerable—to be as naked emotionally as we are before the world forces us to place our hearts under high-grade protection.

True love demands both accountability and sacrifice. It calls for the courage to recognize when we are the ones blocking love from reaching us—not the world, but the person staring back in the mirror.

It's nobody else's responsibility to break down our barriers. We are the ones (knowingly or unknowingly) who built the barriers, so we must be the ones to tear them down.

This means shifting our attention from expecting change in others to committing to our own inner work, recognizing that true growth and connection start with us.

Likewise, we cannot force someone else to tear down their barriers; that is a journey they must decide for themselves to take. Instead, we must turn inward and focus on ourselves. We need to tend to our own gardens, breaking down the walls that have kept the light of love from nourishing them.

Learn to love yourself—the authentic, imperfect, and beautifully flawed version of who you are. Only by embracing your insecurities and accepting your humanity can you unlock the wellspring of love within, allowing you to welcome others with an open heart and give freely from a place of genuine connection.

From barriers to bridges

I struggle to accept love and have often pushed it away, ending relationships too soon—relationships that might have thrived if I had been more open, more present, and more willing to give.

This pattern of rejecting love has shown me that the issue isn’t the absence of love in my life but the walls I’ve built that prevent me from fully experiencing it. Or assuming I needed to add something to myself to feel loved.

But as Rumi says: the journey isn't about going out into the world searching for love. I have love to give, and I know others have love to give me. But I won't feel that love until I remove my barriers.

A lifetime spent fortifying existing barriers and building new ones can't be undone in one day or even one year. It takes time and more importantly, it takes sustained effort.

The road back starts with acknowledging the barriers—bringing awareness to them and then peeling back the layers until all that remains is the essence of who we are…love.

Embrace yourself fully, imperfections and all, with compassion and forgiveness. Remember, most people—including you—are doing the best they can with what they know. Without self-love and self-forgiveness, emotional growth becomes impossible.

True love isn’t a prize to be won or a destination to reach—it already resides within each of us, waiting to be nurtured. By turning inward and embracing your inherent worth, you unlock an endless wellspring of love that wants nothing more than to radiate outward.

Love isn’t something you discover; it’s something you embody. So take a moment, breathe deeply, and remind yourself: you are already whole, already deserving, and already loved.

What I’m into this week:

Sonder (n): the feeling one has on realizing that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one’s own, in which they are the central character and others, including oneself, have secondary or insignificant roles.