On Love:

I read something that made me ponder today. The crux of it all was a woman declaring her “loss” without her significant other. It was a poetic statement – sentimental, loving – the kind of thing found written in a Hallmark card or depicted in a movie. It was genuine, heartfelt – the expression of the feeling isn’t what gave me pause.

What struck me was how she’d fare through the inevitable. At SOME point, we’re going to be without our significant other. At some point, we will lose physical contact with a being we’ve come to love and cherish. We will be without a person upon whom we may have depended for years – by choice or by chance. It’s one of life’s few dependables.

Yet, when I read the statement about this woman’s declaration of joy at her man’s intent to make everything right, it made me feel sad.

One thing I’ve come to learn over many years of marriage and familyhood is that one person can’t make anything right for another. One person cannot be depended upon to remove the sadness and misery of another. That doesn’t mean that we throw away our gestures of kindness and gentleness toward one another. Tenderness is definitely not out the door – but righting one’s own emotional state is a personal journey.

It’s a journey that requires strength and benefits from reinforcement from others along the way, but it’s a journey one must take alone in order for it to be effective.

When we remove that opportunity to journey from another’s life, we disempower them. We take responsibility for what is not our own. We make their happiness into something we think will fit us.

Let us live in the now – creating joy out of our own realities and out of the visions of our minds. The ability to do that without condition is an expression of true love.