Recently, I have been struggling with the concept of love and with what it really means to love blindly. I know you all will know exactly what I mean when I say that over these past few weeks, checking Facebook and all other media, where problematic former high school classmates dwell, has been a test on my willingness to love.
It has brought me to question if loving blindly is really attainable or if it’s a sweet lie we tell ourselves. Loving blindly is rooted in all aspects of life — especially religion, as even the book of books tells us to “love one another.” Talking about love has never been more important. We have to talk about the love we have for ourselves, the most vulnerable and newly targeted among us.
Love is a profound philosophical concept no one quite understands. Love philosophy centers around a few basic questions:
Why is it so hard for us to accept genuine emotion in our lives? Why are transparency and vulnerability so hard? And most importantly — what is love?
This is the most asked and least answered question that exists. What is love? Depending on who you ask, there are many different answers, but essentially the answer is: it depends. Love is hard because it is at the center of our lives. We are impacted by the love or the lack of love we receive from our families, and we take these impacts with us forever.
Is love one of those things that we just know when we see it? What if the love we give is not the love required by another — is that still love?
The conclusion many have reached, and I think we all should reach, is that we do not have to know what love is in order to accept it into our lives. Love just is. It is like many things that we cannot quite explain or cannot quite put a finger on. Regardless of that, I urge you all to try love anyway.
It is uniquely rare that someone or some cause comes into your life — touches your heart and makes you see the world a little differently, with a little more light and optimism. Even if just for a moment. Without love, there is no hope that we will make it to 2020, and that is a pessimism even I cannot entertain. Choose optimism.
Billy Ward, former NFL quarterback, reminds us that “When people choose love, they always choose right.” Love is important because it is something that connects us all. It is an intrinsic, invisible thread that ties us all together.
