Love: What Is It

When we talk about love we seem to think that it's all mushy and cute, but the reality is it's not always so and takes a lot of effort, time, and energy. Today I was talking to an older gentleman and we were talking about how young people today love before they are ready, I'm just as guilty of this as anyone. The reality is we have a tendency to love before our time, to try and say that we are ready to love completely and selflessly. I understand that there is there are exceptions to this rule, but that's not what I want to talk about here.

In our culture, society, and everywhere else in our country for the most part even on my college campus from what I can we have a problem with loving before we ready. You see love is beautifully complex and that's the way it's meant to be, it's not something that is easily understood, or can be comprehended by the lack of wisdom both emotionally and from experiences. Because we like to think we know love what is all about, but the truth is we don't have a clue most of us. I know for me it's something that I've tried to figure out myself, but I'm no closer than I was when I first started dating honestly. I don't really know how else to put this or how else to describe what's happening. Our culture breeds something that isn't love at all, it's not even close to what love is. It's based upon getting our needs met and not about meeting the needs of our significant other first, it's pure selfishness. To put in bluntly we need to remove our head from our asses and look at people in our lives who have been married for years, have lived through trials together, and are still married. Then and only then we can begin to understand what love is.

To often we get fixated on what we are being told we should have versus what we should be doing. I know, I know I'm beating a dead horse, but whatever. I want people to learn from my mistakes so they don't repeat the same thing I did in my younger years, to be better then what I was. Please don't ask me what love is because the only definition I'll tell you what true love is, is the love that God showed us while we were still sinner and sent his son to die on the cross for us. That's the best I can do for you, but before we go on thinking we are ready to love we need to ask ourselves, "Am I ready to put someone else first?" Talk to friends, mentors, people who know you before you make mistakes and also know that you will make mistakes so don't beat yourself up. Show yourself grace because in the long run you will need all the grace you can get.