Love. Love is so many different things to so many different people. There have been books written about it, song sung about it, movies made about it, and lives lost over it. Love is a blessing and a curse.
It always seems to me that we as humans are extremely obsessed with love. Who is dating who? Who had sex with who? It's always on the news in the case of celebrities. And if you're not a celebrity and your love is on the news then you probably have done something wrong. Just saying.
Today in my town a young man of 25 who was accused of killing the mother of his 3 year old shot and killed himself in front of his father in a police stand-off. I know to many of you that may have nothing to do with love. To me, it has love (as well as hate) written all over it.
This boy loved this girl at one time. And made a child. That he loved. His father, who loved him, was trying to talk the gun out of the boys hand. And because he loved his freedom and didn't want to spend his life behind bars, he killed himself. This is a story of love gone wrong. But there are thousands of stories of love gone right. So I tend to keep those in mind when thinking of love.
Recently, I started asking people what love was to them. What it meant to them. The answers astonished me. 95% of people I asked immediately assumed I was talking about romantic love. But I wasn't. I was talking about all of love. The whole shebang. Family love, and platonic love, and parent love and all the other types of love there are. To me, love rules this world. It brings out the best and the worst in people.
Here are some of the answers to "What does love mean to you?"
- Being able to wake up next to the same person for the rest of your life and make it through the day without wanting to snap their neck.
- It's a feeling... Something that happens inside of you. When you have it you turn red and get warm because it's a happy feeling. A longing feeling. If it's about someone, you can't stop thinking about how happy they make you. If it's about chocolate, you were born with that love. If it's about books... GOOD!
- It's about caring for someone enough to do what's best for them, even when it means that you'll suffer for it. Putting their needs above your own.
- It's caring for someone enough to let them grow in whatever way is best for them. To let them lead the life that makes them happy, even if their choices for themselves wouldn't be what you would choose for them. Love is never controlling - If there's control, coercion, or manipulation involved, then no matter what the other person says, that is NOT love.
- Someone you are willing to give your life for without thinking twice about it.
- I think love can mean a lot of different things. Sure it's the mushy, gushy, "I love you and want to keep you safe and forgive your wrongs", but there is also a flip side. To me, true love means that you speak the truth even if the other person doesn't want to hear it. There are times when my daughter doesn't want to be told no or that she is wrong, but someone has to tell her or she will never know. Yes, I show her affection and kindness, but I am also stern and firm. Hard love is just as important as soft love.
- Love is the absence of any negative emotion or feeling, at any given time, about any perceived person, place, or thing.
- Sometimes hard love is even more important than soft love. It is more important to worry about where someone you love is going to spend their eternity that their human suit feelings. But still, it is also knowing that God loves us enough to allow us to make our own choices, and so we must love the other person that way, too. And yet that doesn't mean that we cushion whatever it is that God is that God is doing in their lives to lead them back to the fold. If we try to make the lesson easier, we can hinder them from learning.
- Love is that first moment when you see the person you know you will spend your life with (even if it doesn't work out). You feel all different emotions. You're scared, nervous, happy, excited, and dizzy. It's that feeling like you have no clue what the hell is going on. You can tell that person things you have never told anyone else because you fully trust them and know that they won't judge you. Everything inside doesn't make sense, but then it does because everything seems to fit perfectly. Your heart skips a beat when you see that person. You feel as if you have been lost, because now everything is clear. Knowing that someone can truly love you for who you are, and visa verse, and nothing else matters; that's just part of it.
- Just someone that you can't live without. You think about them all the time. Just the mention of their name makes you smile or your heart flutter... Someone who you can be 100% yourself and real with. Someone who accepts you, flaws and all. Even if they don't like something about you, they put up with it because they want to be with you.
- Hmmm... Walking across the hot desert sand barefoot to give my last sip of water to someone because they are thirsty.
- Always being there no matter what.
- Love is being willing to do anything and everything you can just to see that person smile. To be happy you're waking up and that person is in your life and dreading the day that they aren't. Enjoying every second y'all are together, even if you're fighting. Also, always being there for one another in good times and bad, and, no matter what happens, that person means everything to you.
- Knowing perfection. When you love something or someone, in your eyes it's perfect, even if it's flawed.
- Love to me is feeling stronger towards one person over anyone else.
- Uhhh... Chocolate cake. That's my final answer.
- Love to me is the overwhelming urge to share everything. To always be there no matter the danger, to protect. To encourage, support...... Unconditionally.
- For me, love is so wonderful and complicated. I can't quite describe it. Love is giving someone all that you are. But on the darker side, love is like a poison. If the person doesn't love you back, it can slowly drain you of happiness in life... If you let it.
- Love is unconditional. Period.
- Well... There are different types. In relationship, such as my husband, it means being there through thick and thin and putting him first, after God. 1 Corinthians 13 is my favorite love chapter. Basically it's trying to love others as Christ loved us; Sacrificially.
- Love is putting a piece of yourself on the table hoping that the person you have in mind will put the same piece down and you can both give each other a piece of each other. It can be the best thing in the world when it goes the right way and works out. And it can be the worst thing in the world at the same time, when it doesn't work out. Love is both a hope and a gamble.
- Love is much more than a risk, but it's a risk that one can take and grasp and fall into a dark abyss or dig oneself a hole and only crawl back when you're overcome by your emotions. It's unconditional. You're willing to do anything just to be around that person you love. To do anything to make them smile or laugh. You can hardly breathe when you're around that person you love. Each time you see them, you get the same rush... Whether you see them daily or just periodically. Love isn't always healthy. You have to take the good with the bad, and in turn, you decide if it's worth it. Love is that one virtue that everyone should experience in one way or another.
- No score in tennis?
Love is beautiful and ugly. A wonderful, complicated, dangerous thing that we all face in some point in our lives. If you have no other common ground with a person, you will always have love. Because EVERYONE experiences it.
What is love to you? What does it mean in your life? Please share. I'd love to know!
Scooter Out.
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