Love By Any Other Name...

A fellow sojourner had some amazing insight and additional perspective regarding my most recent post. I am copying her thoughts here and encourage anyone who hasn't read it, to do so, so you can truly hear her voice and, that, in turn, my thoughts may also have a place within contextual walls.

Our friend was lamenting over society's convoluted concept of love: " i meant love, romantic love...[..]..i'm not disillusioned, what's elusive is love itself. who could define or measure? our society seems to idealize it therefore many suffer from unnecessary heart breaking."

I sadly agree with her take on the state of society's mindset. I see our present population as having a very unrealistic view of love, therefore making it so elusive that it is cruelly unattainable in the vessel of a human counterpart. She mentioned how we idealize love...as in, making it (love)... (or at least our idea of love), as the ideal, or end objective goal--the dangling carrot we are desiring to obtain and possess.

Like this beautiful woman, I too have been affected by such ridiculous and rude expectations....completely cruel in their disregard of my own reality and heart's well-being. I think of this with such an aching, and pray that society *myself included* would embrace love that is fierce with reality...and rather than idealize it, that we would RESPECT it...Listen for it--and then PRACTICE "it"~

I was thinking more about this, what I see as a breathtaking, ferocious love...one that is palpable in life--is felt, and shown, and a force to be reckoned with, rather than some sweet, ethereal cotton-candy coated ideal. I thought of a quote I recently read of one of my longtime favorite authors, Lucy Maude Montgomery. She said: "What had seemed easy in imagination was rather hard in reality."

I think *without getting on a soapbox here* that maybe where things are breaking down, or simply getting lost in translation, is in the illusion *ideal* of love that we humans have bought into. It is fed to us daily through media-meals, romance novels, Hollywood films, even in gazing *short-sightedly* at one another's relationships *not realizing there is always more than meets the eye*. Real love is tough. It's not sweet all the time. It's hard to chew, and often hard to swallow. It is tiring to practice. It is elusive to "catch." It is often hidden due to the fact that real love is quiet and unassuming...not announced with fanfare or regaled with Blockbuster bells and whistles.

Love is indeed a four letter word...but one that I wish was never censored for the public. I wish we had just left it alone and rocked that word in all of its raw and, yes, (maybe) shocking, purest form (no stars here...)~

L-O-V-E. Uncensored. Let's use it to go shock some people...