Love

The Wonders of Love

What is it about love that makes people search endlessly for it? We are all capable of love, yet more often than not, we seem to have trouble finding it. Often, once we've found it, we have a hard time holding on to it. Why is that?

I believe it's because people don't know what true love is all about. They think it's all about the feelings... the butterflies in your stomach, the passion, the anguish of waiting to see that person again. And don't get me wrong, these are all wonderful things to experience. However, they are not what makes love. They help to create the initial relationship, but what will ultimately hold your relationship together is time and effort. You can't simply run away when things get tough, you need to sit down and work things out together.

Love isn't just about the lust you feel for each other, or about always going out and doing things. Real love is when you can sit around the house, quietly reading books together; when you can cuddle up on the couch to watch a movie that you hate, but you know he loves; or even when you have a huge argument about the silliest little thing. When you're simply sleeping with someone, you don't get the chance to experience these (some may say) small pleasures. But I believe that love is fully experienced when you have the chance to be able to sit with someone and not have to say a word, yet know exactly what they're thinking.

There have been many a book written about the wonders of love. Robertson Davies makes a good point in his Essay, "The Pleasures of Love": "Everybody wants to say something clever, or profound, about [love], and almost everybody has done so" (51). It's hard not to wax poetic when it comes to love. We want to talk about how it makes us feel; all the wonderful ups, and not so wonderful downs, it puts us through. But really, love is something that can be hard to describe to someone who has never had the pleasure of experiencing it.

Once again, Davies has it right when he mentions in his essay that "love affairs" can often have some of the same qualities as true love, but when you compare the two, "love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for emotional marathoners" (51). When you're involved in an "affair", it really should be called a "lust affair", for that's all it is. Quite often people can be tricked into thinking that these "affairs" are, in fact, love. But more often than not, they are simply a whirlwind of emotions, that generally end in heartache. Take Romeo and Juliet, for example. Davies dissects it quite well in his piece, but we won't go too deep into it (you can always read his Essay on the topic; quite moving). But there was a young couple, who were so deeply caught in the throes of passion, that they believed it was love. And look what happened to them! Do we really want to end up like that?

Davies also talks about what might happen if they were to be spared death, only to live together for fifty or sixty years (52). Look at some of the people around you; do you know anyone who has been together for more than a few years? Many people tend to get married after a year or two together, because they're still in that emotional, roller-coaster state of bliss (or "the honeymoon period" as it's often referred to). But after a few years together (sometimes even less!), the bloom has fallen off the rose, and they realize that they have nothing in common. They can't hold decent conversations, so they never really talk. The passion has faded and they've realized there's nothing left to their relationship anymore.

I believe that's part of the reason we