You from out of town?
Love.
If any word was ever created that evoked so much emotion without ever being understood, it was unquestionably “love”. Why do people put so much emphasis on it?
You probably already knew this, but when I was 19….. I knew everything. I did. All you had to do was ask me. I KNEW I wanted to have a career in music management, I KNEW that I was going to transfer schools, and I KNEW that I was in love with my girlfriend. (of course now I work in financial planning, graduated from the same school, and haven’t spoken to that girlfriend since about 3 months after I knew I was in love with her)
So was I wrong? I whiffed on the job, whiffed on the school, did I whiff on love too? I don’t think so.
That year I had several events happen that made me re-evaluate really most things I knew. My faith changed, my ideas on relationships was turned upside down, and I was posed a simple question that I will never forget. What is love? It’s not something we define too often (unless you’re a hopeless romantic or emo kid, which I have been both), but think about it. What is it? My response was an example. My grandfather is my absolute hero, hands down. To me, his life is love. To his wife, to his friends, to complete strangers, he treats people with kindness, tenderness, and most importantly, respect. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from. His relationship with every person he meets is how I defined love. His relationship with his wife is how I wanted my marriage to be one day.
Then came another blow to the stomach.
“But how do you know that’s what love is?”
What? What do you mean how do I know? I mean, you just know right? Isn’t that what everyone always says. “When you know, you know”. Right….?
I thought that’s what it was because that is how I defined the word love in my head from the experiences in my life up to that point. Now I’m not saying I was wrong. Not at all. In fact, I still define love basically the same way today. But what I realized is that that is MY definition for love, not everyone’s. When I tell someone I love them, that is what I mean. They hear something completely different but equally as powerful.
To me, love is a word that describes an indescribable event. Not a feeling, love is an event. It’s fluid and unique. It evokes change and action like no other word can. Love is the best word we have come up with to describe the force that moves everyone towards a specific target at some point in their lives. But in the end, love is just a word. I can’t tell you what love is because I don’t know. I know what I think it is, but the thing I feel that I’ve learned from love is that you make it your own. You define it throughout your life.
So I guess what I’m saying is that maybe the girl who sleeps with the guy for the first time because she thinks she loves him isn’t wrong. Maybe the guy telling his ex girlfriend that no one will ever love him like he does isn’t wrong either. And maybe a 19 year old music management major really did know what love was.
Maybe 