On the Nature of Love…
Love…what an unimaginative word. As a child the mere thought of love would melt me…I wanted to love so badly. I would write in journals, scribbling out the angst and loneliness to an audience of no one. Poems and prose dedicated to that imaginary someone who would command my heart and share in my world their deepest and most personal fears and pleasures. I wanted it so badly. I still want it so badly…
But love means nothing. The word itself has been reduced to little more than a hallmark expression. Our popular culture has reduced it to nothing more than game shows and diamonds–materialism and property. Children grow up on The Bachelor and I Love New York, truly believing that a random assortment of twenty-something people could possibly contain your soul mate. Our magazines have transformed sensuality into sexuality; our news broadcasting celebrity hookups and flings as meaningful while people starve and die for high ideas and lesser evils.
Love…what a pathetically inept word. Anyone can love; everyone does love. Or so we willfully believe. We are so convinced and confused as a populace on the true nature of the word, and more directly the feeling behind the word, that we throw the word around as casually as we possibly can. We blind ourselves to what it means to truly sacrifice for someone and have blurred the line between temporal euphoria and everlasting kinship.
God loves you. Your mom loves you. Your friends love you. Who doesn’t love you? I know the sinister answer: everybody. Because few people truly know what it means to love you. See how many times I’ve used the word in this paragraph alone…worthless. Utterly worthless.
Do we honestly sit around and wonder why this nation suffers from a staggering divorce rate? How can you question something so painfully obvious: our culture has redefined “love” to whatever feels good at the moment. Replacing the young poet’s angst with physicality and ignorance. Love is more than good times and hot sex. Love is more than game shows. It is about loving someone so purely that the mere thought of them suffering brings you to tears; it is about tolerance and acceptance, steady hands and softer tongues.
I love one person. I truly love one single person. I could not imagine her suffering. I cannot breathe. I am vapid. I grow still, a lump so large forms in my throat that I cannot swallow the words that I wish to scream. I would give anything for her. I would die for her. Do you know how easy it is to say that: I. would. die. for. her. Without any question or hesitation.
And isn’t that the test? Does your life and your possessions mean more to you than that person? And more importantly than my own willingness to submit for her, I do not know if she would do the same. I truly do not. And I am completely comfortable with that. I want her to feel my sacrifice…see my blood, pouring out bright red–life escaping in an intoxicating glee, having died for her.
Love is abused. The word is completely inept. Such a proud and magnificent word–reduced to playground crushes and physical desires. I cringe every time I hear some moronic girl talk about how much she “loves” her friends, while she sleeps alone at night–unless she surrenders herself and her body to the man of the night. Call me sexist–women know so much less of love than they think. They abuse the word so willfully. So quickly. So insanely. These girls love everyone, but no one in particular. Men are no better. Mistaking the physical for affection–the warmth of flesh for the radiance of passion. Pathetic. Trite.
I want you to love someone like I love someone. I want you to quit misusing one of the greatest words we have.
I went on a date with a girl recently who told me that she had never loved anyone in her life. I was instantly taken aback, but I respected her so much more. Is she incapable of love? Hardly. But I believe she completely understands it. I am so lucky to truly love even one person. The child who scribbled in notebooks would envy the man I have become–because I have her, even if I truly do not.
You know that you truly love someone when the thought of even using the word to describe your feelings bothers you. When the word isn’t enough; when the emotion is greater than the symbols you possess to express it. True love is heavy…it weighs on you. True love makes an Atlas out of the common man–destined to never fail, determined to never shrug. Shouldering the weight of an entirely independent universe on your back–accepting it for everything that it is, and everything that it fails to achieve. And when that load is not heavy, yet easy to bear, then you have found it–the word beyond the word. The love beyond “love.”
If you take anything from this entry take this: reevaluate the way you use this single word, and what it means to you. If you invest yourself in one other person, without care for reward or redemption, then you understand what I feel.
As for me and my love…
Well…
I do not believe I can ever fully give myself to anyone, until I attempt to give myself to her.
The clock is ticking. I only pray I do not die before I have the chance to tell her everything I never have…
2 Responses to “On the Nature of Love…”
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December 19th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
‘love’ has become a counterfeit currency.
exchange with caution.
December 20th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Love is very much real and very much alive. Just because people overuse a word doesn’t mean it loses it’s value to you.
Love is an emotion not a word. And don’t exchange with caution. Give out all the love you can give and you will find the right person for you even if it takes getting through some hard times because of it.
Exchange with caution…easy to say when you’re engaged!