Love is Not a Thing

Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise. –Victor Hugo

Love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion. –Miguel de Unamuno

Depending on with whom you talk: love is life-affirming, the Angel of Death, mysterious, hormones, heart healing, heart wrenching, makes the world go around, destroys your universe, makes everything more beautiful, is an illusion, a kiss from God, a curse of the gods, lasts a life time, is ephemeral.

There are differences, of course, between loving love and loving the beloved, between giddy infatuation and having your soul saturated and satiated by love for the other. All too often, I think many people experience love as a negative because of confusing one for the other, either in their selves or the other.

I don’t believe that love goes “wrong”: I think people go wrong headed and wrong hearted. Many times this happens because we so often abuse love by taking it – him or her—for granted. We act as if love is a thing we keep in our pockets for special occasions rather than a process that needs constant caring attention. A loving relationship is growing and deepening or it is shriveling and dying: it is never static. Not for long, anyway.  

Love is a verb: it is a process, an action, and a consistent behavior. Love serves, supports, and is caring in the smallest of details. Again, however, we have a tendency towards turning this process into a “thing.” When we do this, our relationship inevitably becomes stuck on going nowhere and headed toward dying. When William Faulkner says, “Don’t be a ‘writer.’ Be ‘writing, ’” he is pointing out the difference between the “thing” (writer) and the process (writing). In the same manner, what I am saying here is, “Don’t be a ‘lover.’ Be ‘loving.’”

Yes, love can be painful. True love is vulnerable. This vulnerability allows her to crawl inside the deepest parts of your soul. And sometimes she will do this with cleats on. As will you do the same in hers. Yet, if it is love that we have for the other, I think we would handle this pain far more wisely if we would see it as part of the process of being loving: that part which deepens our souls and makes us capable of an even deeper and stronger love.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2013