The Trouble With Love Is . . .

If you are an older person, you likely remember the song "You Always Hurt the One You Love." (Actually, it's before my time; I am just an afficiando of music, is all.) It's striking to me that the final words to the song are, "If I broke your heart last night, it's because I love you most of all."

A more dramatic, contemporary view is the heart-ripping tear-jerker, "The Trouble With Love Is," by Kelly Clarkson.

But seriously, I hurt you because I love you? I broke your heart because I love you? What's up with that?

More and more through the years, it has become as though, when talking about love, it refers to another four letter word, and therein is the problem. It is sad that so many have lost the true sense of the meaning. It seems the passion and feeling of love has faded into the air.

We can't deny that as humans we desire to be loved. In fact, every creature wants and needs it in some form.

So what made this such a bad thing? Is it that we've been hurt, betrayed, or rejected? To use that would be pulling up history from the beginning of time. Not one living person hasn't had some kind of experience, some more than others.

Wise up people! You can't get what you can't give.

Love has many meanings involving care, hope, fear, and, yes, commitment. Maybe that's it, being afraid to commit, to experience mutual feeling as friends or as mates. People have told me how difficult it is to just date, much less go any deeper than that.

We have to realize that concepts such as love and trust aren't just going to be a given. They have to be shared. The quick fix term is lust, which seems all too often to have replaced love in this society.

Love, true love, has no beginning, no end as the saying goes. However, lust fades in and fades out. It comes and goes with no purpose, no meaning. Are our feelings so dense that we'll sacrifice the most pleasurable, fulfilling, and happy feeling that ever existed for something so temporary?

Everyone has been hurt, but remember this: It wasn't love that caused the pain. It began with the mind and its thoughts that actually broke the heart. Use such experiences toward strength, not weakness. Learn to love more, and more love will come. It's a wonderful thing to pass on.

"Well then, what is love?" one may ask. That one's easy. I found it a long time ago. Here it is:

Love is patient and is kind; love envies not, does not brag about itself, is not puffed up. Love does not behave disgracefully, does not seek its own things, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

If you know scripture, you will know where I got that. But it makes no difference what your personal beliefs are. Look at that again. You cannot honestly deny that such virtues would mean a happier life for everyone, can you?

Think about it.