"Love sucks. I tell everyone, even my guy friends. You can try to talk me out of it, but I've seen enough now to know: people get hurt. Love sucks." ~ Anonymous
I've recently come to the conclusion that no entity is as harmful to ones name as oneself. It is very difficult to water down the inherent worth of that which is good- but it is easy enough to distort it. Love, like many other virtues of the past, has been crushed in this way. It is not that love itself has changed from something purely beautiful into shallow muck, but that people have changed what they mean.
While love has been twisted throughout all history, our culture hints at just how far we have come. Take for example the phrase, "fall in love". From the beginning it communicates a false message. First, that love is beyond your control. That it is something you are subject to like the forces of gravity. Second, that like falling, there are consequences to love- you get hurt. Finally we see the word "in" as if rather than pouring from you, love is all about you. With this selfish perspective attached to the word love, it is no wonder people envision heartache. Yet true love is antithetical to the common usage. True love is not uncontrolled, but a choice. True love can inflict pain, but it does so with a purpose. True love is not something that you are in, but rather something that you are.
My friend, whom I previously quoted, like many people, felt a need to reject love because what she saw disgusted her. I would contend however that the answer is not to reject love, but a distorted meaning that has stolen the name.
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“Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket -- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable." - C.S. Lewis
Love hurts. Meaning is beautiful, and is what every human searches for.
Fake love hurts. Fake love is meaningless. Fake love hurts, and has a bitter aftertaste. Real love, both Agape, Philia, Storge, and Eros all must be under God's Agape love to hold any meaning. Otherwirse, we are what Keane says in their song "Spiraling": "When we fall in love we're just falling in love with ourselves."
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