Love is pain

They say that we might be too young
To truly know the meaning of love
But you can't be too young to know of pain
And perhaps somehow it's all the same


I've been told I should update my blog... *sniff* I bet you once uni starts I'll be blogging far more often than I do now in the holidays, when I actually have spare time to do stuff like blog...funny that...

Anyway...

People have always said love hurts, and I guess that's true, though I have decided to categorise them into two sorts:

One is the self-inflicted torture kind of love (or "love", or *love*, or l.o.v.e., or any other sort of love that gratuitously incorporates punctuation). This is the sort of love that gets sung about in songs on the radio; the boy-likes-girl-but-girl-thinks-boy-is-a-twit sort of love, the I-know-you've-left-me-but-I'll-keep-on-stalking-you sort of love, or even the I-love-my-guitar-so-much-I'm-gonna-play-it-till-my-fingers-bleed sort of love (although that last one is a bit tangential and would probably be in a spin-off category on it's own).

This is sort of love, while exerting a heavy emotional burden on the subject's consciousness, is in a way, completely and utterly useless, because it is focused on either the future or the past; it has no real relevance to the person's present existence (other than exerting a large gravitational force on the shoulders of one's soul, if indeed a soul could be said to have shoulders). So an example of Self-Inflicted Torture Love grounded in the future would be the person who wishfully hopes the object of their love would some day reciprocate their feelings, that all their dreams would be fulfilled...and an example of this sort of love grounded in the past would be someone pining after last season's relationship that went out of fashion in the worst way possible, wishing time would rewind to that wonderful place in history.


The second sort of love that hurts is self-sacrificing love. This sort of love, while absent of gratuitous punctuation, is in fact the sort of Love that deserves to be capitalised (if you're the sort of person who can be bothered to capitalise things). Self-Sacrificing Love is not trendy, sexy, cool or marketable (unless you are from Hillsong). I would say that it is patient, kind, does not envy, does not boast and is not proud, but that would be ripping off some dude called Paul. It is the sort of Love that makes a new mother get up several times a night to feed her child, the Love that sees you talking to a loner when you would rather be doing something else, it is the sort of Love that tells someone they've done something wrong even though they might hate you for it. Love serves others. Love is what nailed Jesus to a cross, to reconcile to God the people He Loves.

Love is not lost in memories of the past or dreams of the future, though it can look back and forward to these things. But Love is to be lived now, both in your mind and amongst other people now, otherwise there would be no future to long for and no past to cherish.

Love is not to be wrapped up in protective layers, as if it were a fragile moment in time, hanging on a wisp of silence, afraid to be broken in the way a gaze can be broken. Love cannot be afraid, because it seeks to speak to people's fears.**


While the first sort of love is not like the second sort of love, both are felt, and both hurt. So I guess both can be learned from, because pain, I believe, is what they call character-building stuff.


~Um, end of sermon....~


Sooooo....it's probably not all as simple as all that, I am only "young" after all....yes, disagree with whatever you like, there's probably more holes in there than in a piece of Swiss cheese.


**For more on love, layers and fears, see Encouragement: The Key to Caring, by Dr. Larry Crabb and Dr. Dan Allender, a book which has spread through a certain sub-sect of WS over the past few months faster than you can say "plague, without the negative connotations".