All You Need is Love

No, today's post isn't about the Beatles. Even though they are one of the absolute coolest bands ever. Today's post is more about what love actually is and how we can grow from having love in our lives.

I wonder sometimes if we really know what love is. All these books and movies make us think that love is this sweeping romantic feeling that comes over us and changes our entire lives. I'm not saying that things like that don't happen. It's possible to have these kinds of dramatic feelings of love, but I would say that love is deeper than all of that stuff. It's more than just a feeling. To me, love is a choice.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying you can choose who you love. That's a whole other blog post right there, ladies and gentlemen. What I am saying is that this modern idea of love as an emotion that we fall into and out of on a whim is so far from what love is supposed to be that we've forgotten what love really is. To me, love is about safety and stability and the idea that there is something more important in this world than yourself. Love is about putting someone else before your own needs and desires.

I think my generation has forgotten this meaning of love. That love is something that is deeper than this feeling that comes and goes based on hormones and lust. People throw around the word "love" without really knowing what it means.

Perhaps that's why my favorite love story in young adult literature lately is the story between Katniss and Peeta in The Hunger Games. It isn't that Katniss chose who to love--because I believe that she truly loved Gale and Peeta in their own ways. But the real truth and depth of the love comes out in the fact that she realizes which one of them is so important to her that she will give up herself and her own happiness to secure theirs. And even though she works for the good of all of Panem and for Gale, it is always Peeta who is on her mind. It is Peeta whom she cannot survive without, because it is Peeta whom she can see herself waking up with every day and choosing to maintain that love.

That's what I mean by love being a choice. It's about deciding to stick it out when things get rough, to not give up when you get bored. That doesn't mean you have to stay with the first person you fall in love with, but I think a deep love and a deep commitment is something that requires a conscious choice to work at that love to keep it strong.

When it comes down to it, all you need is love. But you've got to choose to make it work.