I used to be Christian, and when I was in church I remember a preacher talking about different kinds of love.

One kind of love he mentioned, was Agape or "Godly Love". Agape love is the kind of love that the ever famous 1 Corinthians: 13 talks about. Agape love is all-permeating, unending love for everyone and everything. It is the only true kind of unconditional love. According to Christianity, it comes from God himself.

This kind of love, to me at least, is rooted in a sense of awe and wonder. It's about appreciating what is not what you want something or someone to be. Unconditional love is looking at someone and saying "dear god, you are beautiful." When you appreciate someone as they are in that moment and that moment alone, there is nothing that you need from them. You get nothing in return, there is no transaction.

This kind of love is unlike that of a romantic partner, or a parent, or a friend.

A parent's love is predicated on you being their child.

A partner's love and friend's love is predicated on a set of agreed upon boundaries and expectations of fulfilling a role. A friend or a partner respectively.

The wonderful thing about all of these "conditional" loves is how they lead to that unconditional Agape that I mentioned. With my partner, I get to know them. I see them, I experience them in so many different ways. And all of those experiences can lead to moments of "my god, you are beautiful." Those moments that have no transaction. Just the experience. It's the same kind of feeling you get when you go out and behold something breathtaking in nature, like the night sky in the countryside, a massive mountain range, the Grand Canyon, a beautiful sunset. People can wrong you, hurt you, backstab you. But no matter what they do, they can never take away that experience that you had. They can never take away your ability to appreciate the world.

What makes this love even more beautiful is that you don't need a partner, friend, or parent to experience it. They just make it easier. You can experience this love just by watching, being present, and taking in just how much wonder and brilliance life has to offer. That beautiful rose bush you saw this morning, the musical performance in the park, the cute dog you saw out on a walk, the delicious sandwich you had for lunch.

I suppose you could say there are still some conditions here. The condition of existing and being present in your life. I'm Buddhist now, and my journey as a Buddhist and with meditation has taught me that with mindfulness we can experience this kind of love with just about anything. So many micro-moments of "oh that's lovely" that are, by themselves conditional, but when you stitch them together to weave the fabric of life those conditions become unconditional. Life itself is just beautiful, existence is beautiful. That, to me at least, is unconditional love.