Recently I was arbitrating a small tussle between my 11 year old son and 8 year old daughter.  They had received two scoops of ice-cream each at a restaurant.  One chocolate and one strawberry.  My son had offered my daughter his share of strawberry ice cream as he does not like strawberry much.  My daughter does not like chocolate much, and he was expecting that my daughter will reciprocate by offering to give him her scoop of chocolate ice-cream.  Which she had refused.  My son was getting quite irritated and wanted his strawberry scoop back.  His rationale—be fair!

That got me thinking.  When we give someone something with a clear expectation of something in return, then it is a trade, a barter.  There is a clear expectation of return for what we have given.  That even holds for the affection we show our children, our spouse or our friends.  If we are loving them with an expectation of something in return then it is not true love.  True love needs to be without any expectation of something in return.

You may ask, what is the use of such “true love.”  If we are not going to get anything in return, why feel this “true love.”  The answer is that we should not have the expectation of receiving anything from anybody ELSE.  When we give without expectation, we get something from within us.  We connect in spirit with another spirit.  For that instance we become larger than Self.  So it maybe Selfish to love, but it is a different kind of Selfishness.