(Take a glimpse inside my mind then watch me fall flat on my face)
True love. Does anyone know what it is anymore? These days, love has been diluted, watered down, and abused to the point of almost having no more meaning.
Little teen girls run around, infatuated with young, "hot" teen boys, lusting for their affection, sighing about how "in love" they are. Wringing their hands and twisting their hair in knots, stressing about whether they really do "love" him or not. When they're around him, they want him, but when they're apart, they don't care.
Not that anyone older than that really understand love either. They might not be as obvious with their silliness as teen girls are, but they miss the point entirely too. They fall into infatuations and lust and brand it as love. Every spark of abnormal, positive tension and skewed emotion between two people (yes, we'll include same-sex relationships in this) is knocked up as being love.
But really, is that love? The aching desire to snatch the "beloved" and passionately kiss every time you see them? Soley that would be lust. A jealous admiration of a person's outward charms and physical looks...isn't that just infatuation? Love goes deeper...
Love is so much more than just a feeling. Than just an emotion. Love, in its truest form, is more like to truth...to faith...to trust...to wisdom...to hope, than it is to sadness, anger, depression, jealousy, and happiness. These are passing. Temporal, fleeting cycles of the superficies. Like, lust, infatuation fall into those. Those are emotion. But love is constant. Love can fight through the fire and come out the stronger. Love is selfless...Love asks not what is best for itself, but what is the best for the object...
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails
1 Corinithians 13:4-8
I don't care what religion you are, or are not. I don't care what your opinion of the Bible may be, but you must admit, this definition of genuine love is dead on. If it can't measure up to that standard, its not genuine. Its something other than love, warped to fit that meaning.
Selfless. Blossoming. Alighted. Constant. Just. True. Deep and beautiful. Amazing. Indescribable. Can't we all get it right?