Its a bit weird how people overhype the idea of unconditional love and throw a whole fit about others / future sig/others not loving them unconditionally like parents do when the whole concept of unconditional love is based on conditions...is it not? Like when does unconditional love exist that everyone can agree on? Within the parent / child dynamic. rarely outside of family if you also include siblings. the child loves the parent and vice versa only because this particular parent raised the child and the parent loves this child unconditionally because they birthed them. Its not really the romanticised ‘I love you for who you are’ unconditional love, its others taking care of your tangible forms because you are theirs  and a part of them. You’d think that unconditional love is placed on such a pedestal because its the only love that is expected to allow the very essence of the self to be seen and accepted, for your identity and individuality as a whole soul placed on this earth among other souls to be fully explored and embraced, but in reality that’s  really not how it goes.  Outside this world, we are all individual independent souls, &  souls don’t have like predetermined spiritual ties’ to other souls like the biological ties humans have with family. We will one day shed the human skin and transcend from this life. - the fact that parenthood and childhood could possibly really just have been based on random selection (or if it wasn’t, there are zero limitations as to who our parents could have been) means that the concept of unconditional love is based on the condition that this person u will love unconditionally either comes from you, or has a biological responsibility to care for you. They don’t really care about the intricacies of your being and existence ,and that’s as deep as the deepest love will go, even though they’re literally the only people in the world who would die for you without second thought. Its unconditional care and protection because they will be held accountable for you.  Now u might say duh, that’s because they share dna etc but isn’t love defined by its ability to love deeper than just the physical? What happens after death, or before earth? or if there was no earth - does that mean that love is a product of the physical world? love is typically exhibited as a dependence on other people and this dependence is integral to living in this world. Why does love elicit such a strong, visceral reaction in us right down to our core if it were only part of this world? Love has to be a spiritual thing. I mean yeah it goes both ways - when you love ur family, you’re more than likely loving that one side of them that is the mother or the father and not loving them as a whole person as you’d love a friend or a stranger but that makes it even weirder when you compare it to conditional love / love outside the family where there is  a hope or an expectation that the other person sees you in your entirety for who you are,  and embraces / adores it. Why doesn’t the greatest love, the inherent love of blood not travel that deep? It is a sacred form of intimacy for sure but this seems to really reinforce how parental love isn’t real love if the deepest love you are to experience with them has an edge, and the only people who can surpass this edge are people you’re meant to go out and find when you’ve reached a stage in life in which you are ready to be independent of your parents. Well it is real love if you think about it from the perspective of being living beings on earth - love here is a tool for survival so anyone willing to feed u, shelter you, keeps you from harms way unconditionally, loves you. it seems like parents and family are like a spring board - the main purpose of their existence is so that you, an individual with no connection to them outside the biology can reach a stage of maturity where you can become the independent entity you really are as a soul and live your life finding other people to form real connections with  until you are freed from the confines of the physical world. parents are practical job bc the form of love that they express is the love of the physical world. What happens after that? I know in the afterlife its like everyone is on equal footing and there’s no such thing as kinship, and so it seems like the only thing that connects you to your parents in the afterlife is the reward of taking responsibility, and caring for them.  So parent child ‘unconditional love’ love is blind and under it, you are kinda metaphysically interchangeable, and conditional love with those who aren’t biologically connected to you is the honest sentiment of love because it is predicated on deliberate and conscious choice and will probably be the genuine bind that transcends into another world and actually has meaning. Unconditional love within long term relationships like marriage is also the same - other than the adherence to a law that the person u marry has protect, love & keep u alive (&vv), there is also the condition of loving them because you chose to be with them, and if that choice changes, the ‘unconditional love’ one party feels will move on the next person they choose to love. so this is why people place familial love over other love because in either case your parents could have not been your parents or your SO could leave you or change their mind, but the fact that in this earth in this time line in this reality I cant change or physically leave my parents means they get the pedestal. So in conclusion, the unconditional love of ur parents is forced by a biological imperative and while they love you enough to die for you, and genuinely care about your happiness and well being, its not the fulfilling deep love that you’d expect to transcend this world, the one which makes you feel whole. On the other hand, the conditional love u feel with someone you truly love for who they are, is unconditional similar to the parental love in that you are responsible for their safety and survival for as long as you choose them, but that is conditional based on who that person is, which you have the freedom to choose based on a sincere interest in them for who they really are as a being. You’re also replaceable here, like in an AU x may have married z instead of y, but the fact that in every possible time line there is a conditional choice, there is real love in each of them as opposed to the love between a parent and a child. In an AU where I have a different kid than the one destined to be mine in this life, if I met the alternate kid, its impossible for me to love them as much as I love this kid, even if I had studied them & am enamoured by them down to their soul.