Love, as it should exist, is much more than a word, much more than a feeling and even more than a choice.
Love is often used as adjective to describe a strong affection for someone, or even some thing. It is very easy to see that using love as an adjective is an emotional superlative not holding a meaningful, lasting affection for what is being described, but it is used quite often. One can only wonder what the use of love in such a way does over time in our thinking and our lasting relationships. Loving a thing that cannot reciprocate is not really love. It may be a high affection or a strong desire, but not love. This shouldn’t be news to anyone. Most have at least an ambiguous inkling of an idea that love is more than that. Saying that it is so much more than that even feels like an understatement.
Love has been romantically described as a verb, identifying action as a validating necessity. Action is required with love. It does take diligent, regular and honest effort for love to grow and develop beyond feelings. And beyond feelings is where love begins, but love exists and has the full potential to be so much deeper than just beyond feelings. Defining love completely as a verb is limiting. Love only as a mode of action can easily become routine maintaining happiness. Maintaining happiness is not what love is all about and cannot truly develop into the mysterious, unique beauty of two lives ending in one life. Sometimes this is seen in the husband who is good at responsibility, but not relationship or the wife who is great in the home but a wreck in the heart. Love has been limited to only a verb, used as tool to put out fires or to satisfy desire.
The problem that most seem to have with love is not knowing how to find it. In fact, the opportunity to love someone will often find you if you don’t find it first. The issue usually is how to actually participate in it, maintain it and grow deeply into love.
In writing my book that recollects and reflects on my life in terms of love and loss, I have revisited what love actually is. It has been so good for me as the better part of this last year has been weighed down by loss. Remembering the love that so deeply developed between me and Marianne has been a new level of healing and strength. I should say clearly that we were by no means perfect. Love is not about perfection. It is meaningfully messy. Below are a few thoughts shared in the book I’m currently writing.
Love is only as good as the commitment that gives it life. It is one thing to love loving a person you care about and how they make you feel. It is a whole different thing to love a person on purpose forever, each day. When you love loving someone and are satisfied in how you feel as a result, love erodes and vanishes. It is unstable and misleading. Love in this way, based on feelings, never grows roots and almost always withers and wilts as the days go by. It is why a husband or a wife can wake up one day and suddenly feel like they are no longer in love with each other. Loving a person on purpose forever each day, is sometimes more mechanical and less romantic, but so much more substantial and robust…and lasting.
Finding love forever, each day is about living in commitment. When your love is rooted in commitment, you can precisely and affectionately describe what you have in terms of an adjective and accurately identify what you do in terms of a verb. Without commitment all you are doing is talking and acting.
You are so right. When I look back over the years, the most precious moments I treasure are when I couldn't find even the love for myself yet there he was protecting me through each turmoil. It was then I could give him my complete trust and we began to function as "one".