Perhaps, the only way to love a person is to love without hope?

I agree! Hope is also expectation, and where there is an expectation (positive or negative), this expectation comes with its own emotional baggage. This emotional baggage is not Love, although it may be dressed up as such.

Can you love without an agenda? Can you really love without putting your self-interest first?

For me, this is the crucial point. For me, Love is unconditional - and I know nothing else about it. However, I can easily test any scenario, feeling, situation etc to see if this attribute of unconditionality is present. If it is not, then the whole thing is about something other than Love, regardless of what is said, done or how the situation may appear.

All my life, I don't know what love is, really, the world for me is nothing but a threat. I'm way more in love with my own narcissism and melancholy.

I see this too in my own life. But I also realise that 'falling in love' - the romantic fairy tale, has little to do with Love, and more to do with other things that are dressed up as Love, but which are clearly something else - such as the desire for emotional comfort and security, longing to be understood etc, not to mention a million other subtle manifestations of one's own Control Issues and trauma manifests.

What 'Love' is or may be is not something that can be put in words - thought is too narrow to confine it without severe distortion. However, it is possible to approach it in the negative, ie by discarding what it is clearly not. This allows the sacred eternal mystery of 'Love' to reveal itself.

Such is my experience anyhow, I cannot speak for another, nor for the phenomenon of 'Love' itself, which, as mentioned, is ineffable.

Thanks for your heartfelt post @diabolika, I think a big part of the game of life is to transcend our social, mental, emotional, psychological conditioning, to see that we have been making ourselves miserable over the lack of something that is actually universal and ever-present. After all, unconditional means that you don't need to do anything at all, or be anything at all, to deserve it and have it. This I find a very pleasing thought.

Namaste! 🔆