I haven't posted in a while, and by that I mean a very, very long while. Before I started to write this post today, I looked back on a few of my previous posts. I have grown immensely in the past two years, even in the past two months, and the girl who wrote those old posts is not the same girl writing today. I considered starting a new blog altogether, but I realized that was not necessary nor was it right. The person I am today is made up of the person I used to be, the experiences I have now, and even the hopes I have for the future. I won't give that up. If my older posts are not the same posts I would write today, it is only a mark of my growth. Besides, I am still the girl who believes. And part of loving yourself includes loving the person you used to be.
That is what I want to write about today. Love. I have learned more about love in the past few months than I have in my whole life put together. I have learned so much that I had to smile reading a few of my old posts, because I wrote about love that I didn't even understand.
There is so much I have learned and so much I could share. I could share how powerful love is, and how real love has the power to shatter every darkness in life. I could share how a fullness of joy cannot really exist unless there is love to support it. I could share how when you choose to love, you must choose to give up doubt and fear. Maybe I'll share this and more in other posts, for love is the real essence of life. But today, I want to share what I have come to understand love to be.
Much of the world has a very self-oriented view of love. There is a rampant belief that love exists to serve the individual. If it doesn't make you happy, it isn't love, and you should let it go. I'm not here to debate on whether or not that is true, but what I do know is that real love isn't focused on the happiness of the one who is loving. When you find real love, it isn't about you anymore.
I was driving, and he was sitting shotgun. We had been dating for a week, and though I had loved every moment of it, I was worried that I would end up having to break it off. I knew this man. I knew how he had loved and lost, and I knew how deeply he cared about the people closest to him. I knew that if I ended up telling him goodbye, it would crush him. We had fallen into a thoughtful silence, and in the quiet I silently begged God to take this man's heart away from me if I was going to end up breaking it, even though I knew that would break mine.
It was that moment that I realized. Cinderella had it all wrong. It was a surprising realization, because I adore Cinderella. But when she sings "So This is Love" as she dances with the prince, I don't think she's quite right. There is certainly magic in starry nights like those, lost in the someone else's arms, but that is not the essence of love. As I realized that I wanted this man to have happiness no matter what, even if it came at the cost of my own, I knew that this was really love.
Love is the greatest contradiction in the world. It turns your thoughts from your own wants and needs to those of someone else, until your focus is their happiness instead of yours. And that brings the greatest happiness of all.
Love does not exist to serve you. It exists to expand your ability to serve others. Love is not meant to be perfect. It is meant to allow you to accept the imperfections of others. Love is not about filling your own needs. It is about finding ways to fill the needs of others. That is real love. And real love means real, lasting joy. They are inseparably connected.
So if you are given the choice, choose love. Not the kind of love you see on television, but real, selfless, good love. I have learned that there is a difference between loving more and loving better, and the world could use a little bit of both. So my challenge to you is to find that real love, the warrior love that fights through weaknesses and doubts and fears and imperfections and problems because it is the strongest thing in the world. That is the love that will make you happier than you ever could have been without it.
