What Is Love?

Love is the urge to bless with no expectation of being acknowledged, appreciated, or blessed in return.

I don't mean "bless" merely as a synonym for "praise" or "glorify." I mean "bless" as in, "materially and actually improving the life experience of another."

Many are blessed by others, but they don't actually participate in love. Love is doing something you don't want to do because your urge to bless overcomes your laziness or distaste or disinterest.

When your child's nose is running green slime, you may not wish to wipe it. She may be coughing and vomiting, lying in her own filth. Her diaper might smell like the Chicago sewer system. If you don't want to go near her, you don't love her.

That's it. Sorry. End of definition. Love is not a thing received. It is a thing done, a thing performed. And many, many people live their lives through without understanding that fact.

If you immediately experience an urge to embrace and comfort the filthy child and then begin wiping, washing, and changing her, you are participating in love. You get the puke and snot and poop on you, but you get past it because your perceptions of your child's needs defeat your offended senses. Your tolerance instantly surpasses your initial disgust. Your energy levels rise to meet the needs of the human being you cherish, and you act.

Your memory of this event will be the way this child clings to you. You will vanquish misery, and the child will worship you. Long after she sleeps in your arms, you will hold and comfort her. You'll be reluctant to let this moment go. You won't feel proud or heroic. You'll be forced into total wakefulness, and you will be humbled by a third Presence that remains with you and your child. Awed by Love's transformations, this is as close as you will ever get to God in your lifetime.

If you force yourself to go back into the room after your initial decision to walk away, you may or may not be exercising an option to love. You may be acting out of a perception of "obligation." The ethics and morality of your role as parent (whether you are, in fact, the biological parent of this child), might force you to do your "duty" by this other human being. You will tend to her needs efficiently. You will perform your cleansing and reclothing tasks reluctantly.

Afterward, you will remember the presence of revolting substances and little else. You will remember your attempts to put the child back to bed several times, and you will remember your anger because she kept waking up. The experience will be marked chiefly by the overwhelming sense of disgust and your relief when she finally stayed asleep so that you could go back to bed yourself.

"Now just a minute!" people will exclaim. "Love is simply a feeling! It's a moment that one perceives at the peak of excitement, say (figuratively speaking), when two are gyrating and undulating in a carnival ride!"

Nope. Gyrate and undulate all you want. Sweat, pant, gasp! Cry out involuntarily as the roller coaster rounds a curve and gravitates the two of you tightly, tightly together.

That is not love.

Love is an overwhelming desire to do that which eases pain and heightens joy in a thing, place, idea, or person you find wonderful. And if you are the person receiving that love, and if it is a sincere love, offered as it should be, with no conditions and no expectations of being returned, you might not even know it's there. Your pain is eased, but you feel entitled to having your pain eased. You may have moments of ecstatic joy, but you get used to it, and after a while, it isn't a carnival ride, but it's comfortable, and you take life's comforts for granted, forgetting that many of them exist because someone believes you are wonderful. You come to the erroneous conclusion that you somehow deserve all of this.

When love is gone, we at last recognize that our lives were good because of a person who made it good. We also recognize ourselves for the pigs we are, but we find that conclusion distasteful. We walk out on it; we find it easier to dismiss "love" as merely a feeling that came and went, and we simply begin looking for the next gratifying experience.

We began life as selfish little creatures. Some of us remain so. We continue to take more than we give. We do exactly as we like, always. We laugh at people who see Love as that third entity in a relationship. In our relationships, we're constantly searching for the best "deal." We're Capitalists, after all! We're still pigs.

Upon whom (or what) have you showered love? For whom have you experienced a desire to do that which is difficult, tedious, or miserable, with no expectation of receiving anything in return? What do you love? Whom have you blessed?