What love should be?

 

What love should be?

I was with a friend on a cool afternoon and we were discussing random things and a thought hit me, after thinking it through for a while I threw the thought to my friend and the thought was, what does he think love should be? And he’s response was captivating.

He started like this, love has to be one of the strangest paradox’s in life, everybody wants it, few know what it is, most believe it is a bunch of other things that really has nothing to do with the eternal gift that is love. Humanity is in love with love by far more literary and artistic expressions have their roots in love, let’s face it we see it everywhere from the poppy dog eyes of Da Vinci’s Monalisa to the moan’s and sighs you hear watching the latest Hollywood chick flicks, it’s all around us, from superman’s constant fixation on Lois lane to Bogarde’s famous “here’s looking at your kid from Casablanca”, and if you just came out of a bomb shelter and don’t know what television is all you need to do is go to the park, see old couples walking hand in hand, teenage girls giggling like they have butterfly in their tummies or a pimple faces boys poppy dog eyes, its everywhere, and everyone no matter who wants it, even Atilla the Hun succumbed to it.

To do justice to this piece I have to briefly talk about what love isn’t, love isn’t attraction, it is not a warm feeling you get when you get on a bus, and see a beautiful girl for the first time and start obsessing, chances are it’s either lust or infatuation, love is not lying awake at night dreaming about her, or showing your cruel side to flowers, plucking each petals “he loves me he loves me not”, love isn’t a feeling love is a choice and no one  aptly describes or captures the essence of this eternal gift better than  Paul in 1 Corinthians 13: 4 -7.

Love is selfless, its giving the best part of you without expecting anything in return, it’s not investing in another’s emotions for your benefit,  its working to see the joy and happiness in another, its hoping to see the miracle that is the beautiful growth experienced in the person you love, not manipulating people and events to bring about what you think they should become, its holding back, bearing the pain even though you can attack realizing attacking would hurt more knowing the one you love is hurt, an injury inflicted by you. Love is a choice and when we make that choice we begin to experience the joy and total happiness that only true love can bring, and only when we realize that love is a choice and not a feeling you get because you fell in love, we would begin to fight for what is truly important ‘true love’.

I leave you with these thoughts from these great men and woman, “love conquers all”  Virgil,  Aristotle describes love as “to will the good of another”, Bertrand Russell describes love as “a condition of absolute value” as opposed to relative value, Philosopher Gottfried Leibniz said that “love is to be delighted in the happiness of another”, Meher Baba stated that “in love there is a feeling of unity and an active appreciation of the intrinsic worth of the object of love”, Biologist Jeremy Griffith defines love as “unconditional selflessness”, so whatever form it takes, Romantic love paternal/maternal love, it can all be summed up in 5 words, in the immortal words of the Beatles “All you need is love”.