It has been a while since I continued my explanation about love. More and more I am understanding that people just don’t know what love is. I find this sad, but at the same time I understand it. Most of my life I have been taught that love is love. Then I was told love is emotion. Then I was told love is a power. Then I was told that love in undefinable. Then I was told that love will save us all. Okay. Which is it?
I am developing a headache. It is late, but I cannot sleep for another hour or so, so I must do something. I find it hard to believe that we confuse so easily the emotions that love conjures and love itself. We know that emotion is fickle, unreliable, and shifty. We know that emotion does not last, but we still seek to define love as emotion. Absurd. Yes, it gives us wonderful emotions, but sometimes it gives us horrible emotions. Usually we aren’t kidding when we say that love stinks. Sometimes it really does. But love is not emotion…it is an edifying force. It is the force that builds everything from buildings, to people, to wind, to relationships, and on and on and on. Everything that is constructed is done through love. And is this odd? It shouldn’t be. Think of any situation that you truly can define as loving. What is happening? Someone is trying to build something else up; trying to support something; trying to make something better; trying to increase the possibility of someone being in their life. In all these situation someone is attempting to edify something, and that force we use to accomplish our desires is love. I don’t know about other people, but when I am loving my car by washing it, or having its oil changed, there is not a whole lot of emotion involved. When I am teaching my girl how to read, there is not a whole lot of emotion involved in the teaching (but there certainly is a lot of frustration involved about the process). What I want people to understand is that love is much more than we allow it to be.
