Is love a promise we can truly make?
I think every person who has ever loved has had a certain vision of love he or she could always go back to in times of darkness. It is this vision that has first shown us our first glimpse of happiness. It is this vision that enabled us to know what a life of meaning could be, what a life of love is worth.
Without this vision, we remain trapped within ourselves. We remain selfish. And our eyes that were meant to look at someone else, to appreciate someone else’s beauty are sorely misused into trying to look at our own countenance. How could we even look naturally that way? Without using a mirror, we could never even properly see ourselves.
We were meant to be seen by someone else as we were meant to see another soul. We were meant to love another as we were meant to be loved.
Seeing this vision, we finally realize the meaning of our whole existence. We find the very purpose of our lives. And somewhere within that first glimpse of heaven, we know for the first time the value of eternity. For what is time without love? And what is love if it not be eternal?
Love alone redeems us. It is love alone that shows us who really are.
“Love is trembling happiness.” — Kahlil Gibran
The Decision to Love
From our initial encounter with love, we are changed. In a way, we are also set free. Free to walk away and never be vulnerable enough to let someone in. Free to let go of all that would ever be required from us by love. At the same time, we are also free to decide to nurture the love we have found. We are free to stay and to give everything we’ve ever got for the priceless treasure we have just found.
“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”? Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
Many people run away because they are afraid of committing themselves to love. They don’t want to make a vow because they think that love should never be an obligation to fulfill.
Love, according to many, is all about that initial bliss. And so we love only until we feel warm and comfortable inside. We love only when we never experience pain.
When dryness comes, as it always does, we think we have lost love. And maybe we have. We have lost it because we did not decide to keep it. It has abandoned us because we have abandoned it first.
Love is not an object we can obtain by trading an ephemeral good we care nothing about. Love is a flame that must be kept burning by those who decide to give it their full devotion and courage.
Love Is Not Slavery
Be that as it may, love is not a mere chain that enslaves us. We are not some kind of machine that is programmed to do this and that without considering the deepest desires of our hearts.
Love requires commitment, but love never forces itself upon any person.
To say that we can love without our hearts is to say that we can breathe without our lungs.
Consider choosing a husband and taking care of one’s marriage. Certainly, there will be ups and downs. One will not always feel happy. But one also does not merely pick a random person from the crowd and then decide to marry him. One chooses using very important considerations. We decide because we see something good and beautiful and true that we want to keep forever even when there will be times of trial and suffering ahead.
Consider also the love of a mother for her child. Certainly, she will not always experience comfort and satisfaction. A baby even cries through the night and disturbs the sleep of the mother. But a mother loves the child, a love that is more than a decision to care for her child. It is indeed more than fleeting feelings and comforts. But present indeed is that fondness and delight in her child that never vanishes and is beyond all suffering and pain.
The Mystery of Love
The great mystery of love is that it is beyond our joys and our sorrows. It is by love that we find our greatest happiness, but it is also by love that we feel our deepest grief.
Love is a very complicated thing. When you first love, you love all the beautiful things, all the good things that touch your heart and make you happier than you’ve ever been. Love changes you. Love opens up for you new doors and new worlds that give a fresh and deeper meaning to your life.
But when you continue in love, you know that those things are not everything. You learn that love is also painful, that love consumes you and demands every unimaginable sacrifice from you.
Love is joy and sorrow, love is bliss and pain, love is receiving, love is giving, love is holding on and love is letting go.
Love leads us into paths we would never have followed on our own — paths that urge us to be brave, to be unselfish, to go on loving, even if receive nothing back.
Love is a complicated thing. We can try with all our might to define it, to claim it, to grasp it, but in the end, it is love that defines us, that claims us and that grasps us. We become immersed in love and we will never be the same again.
Final Thoughts
Love isn’t always about feeling good. Many times, we need to endure times of suffering and emptiness, times of pain and darkness. Days can pass by without thrill or pleasure. And we go on only because we believe we cannot let momentary trials take away the best thing we have ever found.
Yet though this is so, we also need days that can remind us of the light that first captivated us. We need to be reminded of those times when we first gazed upon the beautiful and the true.
In order to carry on, we need to remember why we have ever loved at all.
Love is more than a feeling. But love is also more than making a decision and a commitment.
Let us never reduce love into a mere addiction where we selfishly desire only feelings of elation even to the detriment of the person loved.
But let us never reduce love into a kind of slavery either where we can boastfully say to the other that we have decided to commit like machines without a human heart.
Love, in the end, is what helps us discover what it means to be truly human.
The thing about hope is that it’s a positive force that shines the most when it’s dark. When everything’s going well, we hardly notice it’s there. But when things go against us, when our dreams fade and when we see no immediate reprieve from our troubles, that’s when hope does its best work for us.
"Where Hope Can Be Found"