Cynic turned Realist: Love.

In Junior High I was obsessed with understanding what love really was. I’m not exactly sure what I was hoping to find, but I remember writing, reading, and thinking for 2 years and giving up a hopeless mess. I took the cynical route claiming that love was merely a choice - nothing more, nothing less. In hindsight, it was a little bit of a burden for a 13 year old.

Ten years later, I think I am finally starting to get the real picture.

Now I can see where I wanted to go with the idea of choice – I wanted it to be consistent and it seemed that if it was a feeling-based state of mind, it would be up, down, here, there, and gone before you know it. I knew that wasn’t right, but I didn’t have much else to go on. I sing a different tune these days.

Love is. It is. It takes care of, it takes interest in. It’s selfless, and remains without conditions. It sifts the unimportant and hurtful from meaning and poignancy. Love speaks, it touches. Love forgives and communicates. Love is quiet and it’s deep. It’s open and transparent. It’s grounded. It’s real.

I don’t know for sure if I thought in Jr. High that I’d find love to mimic a fairytale with a prince and princess, there were ounces of such thought, of that I am sure.

Now, I am coming to find that the beauty of the real thing is its lack of fairytale-ness in every sense of the word. Expectations are easier to meet and we are allowed to remain ourselves. Lord knows I’d make a terrible princess.

There was no amount of reading and thinking I could have done at age 11 that could have brought any sort of clarity. I needed to be taught, and more than taught, I needed to be shown.

It’s pretty wild what being loved can do to you. It’s challenging, humbling, calming, wonderful, and is worth all of the effort necessary.

To love perfectly, well, that’s a whole other story, and one I’m sure I will never be able to write. I should probably finish the one I started to write 10 years ago.

I think the 13-year-old me wouldn’t have a problem with the ‘me’ today and my take on that whole ‘love’ thing. Thanks, Whitney circa 2000, for your approval.