Levels of Love
My girlfriend and I have been talking lately about the nature of love and how to define it. I feel like I'm starting to gain a better perspective about love because I have been in three serious relationships in the past year. I think the thing that I've learned most is that there are many levels of love and many different types of love. When someone tells someone else that he/she loves him/her, it can mean many different things. Falling in love is a different experience for each person. I really don't believe that there is one way to fall in love. I think there is really only one constant in the realms of love, and that constant is God's love for his children. All other ways of loving fall somewhere beneath the pure love of Christ. Love is specific to the situation in which it finds itself. Loving someone in one moment may consist of holding them close in your arms, at another moment it might mean letting someone go, and at another moment it might mean that intimate physical expression of love reserved for happily married husbands and wives.One thing I do know is that love is a verb. Love compels us to action-- to serve, and nurture, and change. So what does it mean to "be in love"? I don't think it is ever the same for any couple. Television and movies often portray love as a physical force that draws two people together with such magnetism that they cannot live without one another. While I think that this accurately portrays one aspect of being in love, I also think it is the weakest and most insignificant part. Love is about putting the needs of someone else ahead of your own needs. Love is about giving without ever expecting anything in return. Love is about doing what's right, no matter the consequences that follow. Love is about becoming what the other person needs--about sharing joys and sorrows. Love completes and complements; it edifies.
So where do these truths about loving leave all of us negotiating love's battered landscapes? I don't really know. All I know is that I love, and because I love I find meaning and purpose in my life.
posted by Joel @ 11:23 PM
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