There is slurpy, hormonal, emotional kind of love.
There is a mature, comfortable, understanding and stable kind of love.
There is family love that is quirky, sometimes at odds, but often more bonded than the members expect.
And there’s a mother’s love. Unconditional for most, with limits for others. I’m the unconditional type. I am also a “momma bear,” you mess with my kids or grandkids, you answer to me or run.
I’ve looked up “love” in Google and found a mind numbing array of definitions. The quote I kept coming back to is this, attributed to Sayshainar:
“Love. We think about it, sing about it, dream about it, lose sleep worrying about it. When we don’t have it, we search for it; when we discover it, we don’t know what to do with it; and when we have it we fear losing it.
“It is the constant source of pleasure and pain. But we can’t predict which it will be from one moment to the next.
“It is a short word, easy to spell, difficult to define, and impossible to live without.”
I think Hollywood, the music industry and mass marketing has made it so unrealistic that people think it’s all warm and fuzzy all the time, that it comes to you and that you don’t have to work for it.
My Grandparents were married over 50 years. This year my parents hit their 60th. I’m a rookie in the club at 30 years and what I know is that all of us laugh over the crazy fun times in our marriages, we get a bit quiet when it comes to the hard times, but what we all agree on is that it takes commitment and work.
It doesn’t come automatically each and every day, sometimes you wake up and think “who are you?”
But for those of us in it for the long haul, you keep trying to find out.
We all evolve, change, grow and during those times we evaluate where we are in life, and with our partners, we ask are we still going to work on being together. Sometimes that takes a lot of patience to find the ground you can both stand on.
Sometimes love works, sometimes it doesn’t. But what I’ve found in life is that you have to be willing to take a chance and try.
Love is the emotion that takes a risk to know it.
Whether you love people, friends, families, partners, your fellow citizens, the Earth, animals, it all takes commitment, and risk. It hurts like heck at times, but you can’t be afraid to try again, or keep working at it, or in the end if you don’t, you come up short of all the things that could enrich your life.
If you have the great fortune to have the things and people you love in life, cherish them.
Life is short.
Tell them everyday you love them. You never want to regret not taking the opportunity to say so or show them.