Understanding Love

I started my new job today.  It was one of four days I will actually get paid to be at the ministry center this summer.  I spent the morning hanging out with the ladies there, chatting with them over breakfast, helping to watch their children while they smoked or showered, and helping to make sure they had what they needed to achieve their goals for the day.  Some of those goals were quite small, others a bit larger, but all were goals of some sort.  Around lunchtime, I suddenly found myself alone.  It was a bit ironic considering I went there with the hope of pouring in to the lives of these women, to be a sort of conduit of hope in hopeless places, and I was alone!  I spent several hours alone actually, and since there was no one to engage, I decided to sit on the patio with a magazine and do some light reading.  I casually flipped the pages, not very interested in most of its content, and answered the phone when it rang.  All was quiet for the most part.

As I was leafing through the magazine I came across a page about a writing contest.  The magazine is sponsoring a writing contest about “life lessons”.  The topic question is “When did you first understand the meaning of love?”  I thought to myself, I should enter this contest.  I’ve only entered one other writing contest and apparently didn’t win (or lost, in another word) but that was several years ago and hey, it was worth a shot.  So as I continued to mindlessly turn the pages of the magazine, my mind was turning pages of memory in search of the moment, or even a moment, when I understood the meaning of love.  I was a little troubled at my lack of ability to pinpoint a moment, and the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t let it go.  Finally I put down the magazine and retrieved my laptop from the car.  I figured maybe if I started writing something would come out.  That happens to me sometimes – I start writing about some topic I believe to have a grasp of only to discover what I thought I knew about myself and my thoughts/feelings/reactions was wrong.  It’s weird.  But anyway, I figured I’d start writing and voila! I’d have a better understanding of love.

I started writing, had about a page written, reread it, then deleted it all.  

Then I started again.  Then I deleted again.

I have now started this essay three times and I still don’t know what I’m talking about.  

The stupid thing is that I have received so much love in my life, this essay should be cake.  So why can’t I figure out how to write about any of it, or really how to write the understanding?  

Sadly, I believe it’s because I have yet to gain a good understanding of love.  I can give you the usual answers: it’s a deep longing for someone, a sacrifice on behalf of someone else, a burning desire to be near another, etc, etc, etc.  We could go to the parental definition, the idea of doing anything, even dying, for one’s child, but again, that’s not really an understanding.  How do you write such a thing? 

What I began to see was I still don’t have a real understanding of love because I think our definition of love isn’t really love, or at best it’s a limited love.  We do for others, long for nearness with others, say the words “I love you” to others, almost always because of what we get in return, not what we’re giving.  Does that sound completely jaded and cynical? 

For as much as I “love” the people in my life, there is almost always something I get in return for my love. Does that make my love any less real or effective? Or is it still valid, just a little twisted?

Maybe that’s the point.  Maybe our version of love is only defined and fulfilled when given, then taken, then taken, and given again.  It’s a continuous movement that becomes tangible, realized, in the give and take.  Love changes from  a noun to a verb and back again an indefinite number of times.  Maybe that’s the part I’m just beginning to understand.  So it’s a little messy, a little broken, but still something.  Maybe that’s love here.

Being the neurotic individual I am, I had it in my head that I was going to get an essay written tonight, even if it sent me into an emotional coma for lack of understanding, or at least identifying well, love in my life.  Forget the fact that the deadline for submissions is September 15^th – I need to get it done!  But then I realized I have more processing to do, which is why this post exists.  Writing about writing - only a writer (aspiring or otherwise) would find value in such a topic.  

For everyone out there who has loved me – please hear me when I say you have all loved me well.  This dilemma does not stem from your failure to love, it comes from my failure to understand.  All of you are the reason I even bother to attempt the understanding.  You deserve it because you’ve been good at the job, which I know hasn’t been easy.