Love is not true if you only give it when it is easy and when it feels good. Love is true when you still give, even when it hurts and it’s scary. True love doesn’t back away and say, “I’m scared to love you because I might get hurt.” Love is not selfish like that, it gives when it’s good and when it’s bad.
It’s time we learn to realize the value in people enough to pursue and enjoy them for who they are and not worry about the broken parts. Take it as it comes, with love and with patience. Because you know what? True love cries itself to sleep at night when it’s scared for the people around them, but true love also gets to be more excited and full of life when the people around them succeed and pull through hard times.
When love is real and what it should be, the lows are lows but the highs are so much higher. The lows are lower because you care so much, and love so deeply. You don’t want to see something you love broken. The highs are higher because you care so much and love so deeply, you are brought to life when the things you love are happy.
I don’t only write this from my perspective, but from the perspective of a multitude of people in my life who I see deeply hurt when life gets hard and the people who have claimed to love them back out and aren’t around. Anything from illnesses, to a broken down car, to grief, I’ve seen the effect it has on people when your friends show true love towards you and then when they don’t. I’ve seen people brought to life in the most stressful, frustrating, painful times because of this true love. And I’ve seen people brought even further down to the point where they feel completely hopeless and lost. Is that how we want our friends to feel? Just because we don’t have the guts to love them when things are scary and painful?
Love, is selflessness. Truly expecting nothing in return. Love is not truly love without sacrifice. It doesn’t hold high expectations. When we do get something in return, it’s great. But it doesn’t expect it and it doesn’t give solely for the sake of feeling fulfilled. Sometimes it’s exhausting, an uphill battle. But then sometimes it feels like you’re flying, and it fuels you for those painful moments when love is a choice. The only expectations we should have for people, are the ones that they’ve shown us we can have for them. It’s not love to create expectations and false identities for our friends. We have to allow them to show us how much we can trust and expect from them. And THAT is what we fall in love with, the parts of them that they do show us and allow us to be a part of. We can’t get angry at the parts of them that they haven’t shown us.
I see in the people around me, that the word love has lost its power, and I hurt for them to see that.
It is one of my deep desires to, through my own actions, restore some of its meaning and power to my friends and the people in my life. Because, what exactly is life without love, and what is love without life?
-Isabelle Loux
From the Heart 