Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being "drawn toward." Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one's friends and enemies. Love creates righteousness, or justice, here on earth. To make love is to make justice. As advocates and activists for justice know, loving involves struggle, resistance, risk. People working today on behalf of women, blacks, the aging, the poor in this country and elsewhere know that making justice is not a warm, fuzzy experience. I think also that sexual lovers and good friends know that the most compelling relationships demand hard work, patience, and a willingness to endure tensions and anxiety in creating mutually empowering bonds.
For this reason loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called "love." Love is a choice -- not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a conversion to humanity -- a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh. ~Carter Heyward in Passion for Justice~
I love.. because I choose to.
I used to think that love is an emotion that comes naturally. Intense, powerful and passionate, like Scarlett O' Hara and Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Or as the king from Walt Disney's Cinderella said, "Love. Bah! It's just a boy meeting a girl under the right conditions. So.. we will ARRANGE the conditions." Or like what Mr. Warren often said in class: "The stars are all in the right places.. the birds are singing the right song..." (Stars only shine during the night.. do birds sing at night?) Do understand that this was my opinion of love when I was a rebellious teenager, thinking that I know everything when I really don't know anything. How stupid and naive I was. Probably read too much Francine Pascal's Sweet Valley High.
There is a woman in church that I admire and look up to. She is probably in her late sixties now, and she has the most fantastic smile. Her smile was comforting, motherly and sweet, and her cheerful and warm personality is always comforting, especially when I feel awkward or somewhat out of place. Furthermore, she always seemed so secure and happy, never grumpy or grouchy, unlike some of the cantankerous people that have so often come into my life and bring about a worrying degree of emotional havoc. I shall not elaborate on that, it makes me depress to even think of it.
Now, I've seen a lot of touching and beautiful moments in church, but only a handful left a deep impact in my life. This happened a few years ago. The guest speaker invited the congregation for altar call, and there were many who stepped up front for prayer. Some wanted healing, some wanted salvation, some needed financial help, some wanted forgiveness... and after a few moments, the pastor asked couples to come to the altar to pray together. Many couples went, and most of them were young or middle-aged couples, who have toddlers or teenage children. The woman that I mentioned earlier came to the altar with her husband. They held hands and they prayed together. You can count using only the fingers of one hand to know how many elderly couples responded to the altar call. This couple was one of the very few. I don't know why I felt so touched and mesmerized at that moment. I didn't understand why I was feeling the way I felt. It wasn't an unusual scenario after all. After church, I shook off that feeling, but deep down I was still pondering.
After a few months, the altar was opened for prayer again. The woman's husband went up for prayer this time. As he was in the midst of prayer, raising his hands to God, his wife came down to the altar, hugged him from behind, and in each other's arms, they prayed. I smiled to myself, and was once again touched. This time, I finally understood my feelings.
I have a mental picture of how I want a marriage to be. It's not about the wedding bells, or the large chiffon dress, or the rings, or the wedding dinner (this is a must if you're Chinese), or honeymoons in exotic islands, or nights of extreme passion, or even growing old together. Marriage is all that and more. A women's magazine once mentioned that most women want the whole wedding shenannigan, not a marriage. Yeah it would be nice to have wedding bells ringing when I walk out of the church hand-in-hand with a brand new hubby, or to have a large chiffon dress (I still prefer the classic white), or flowers or honeymoons etc... about growing old together, well there are elderly couples who blame every single unfortunate and miserable event in their lives on their spouses. Maybe not, but I've seen couples like that and it ain't pretty. One wonders how such relationships survived for so long. My mental picture of a marriage is like that of the couple I've mentioned: married for so many years and yet still caring for one another, praying together, and more in love with each other than ever. Her eyes still twinkle when she talks to her husband, and they still laugh and giggle like young couples in love. I've heard of couples who fell out of love for each other after years of marriage and children, always arguing and bickering and fighting all the time. Some of them even went to the point of telling their kids "Don't grow up to be like your mother!" or "Look at your father! You want to be like that?" It's hard to imagine that they were once so in love and pledged to be together for all times, and the kids are stuck in this endless war. It scares me to know that relationships can be so strong for a moment and so fragile after time passed by, while some grow stronger still. *Glad my parents are not on an all-out war against each other.*
I guess I was touched because such gestures of love after so many years of each other, such as praying together, hugging each other and talking with that special twinkle in each other's eyes, gave me hope. It comforts me to know that I may one day experience such a special bond as well. I have hope. Sure they definitely have gone through rough times. Which couples don’t right? But yet, through it all, their love grew stronger still... because they choose to love. That's what love is. It's a choice. You can either sit around and complain until cows start wearing bloomers, or you can choose to see the best in the person and give it 110% support.
I think also that sexual lovers and good friends know that the most compelling relationships demand hard work, patience and a willingness to endure tensions and anxiety in creating mutually empowering bonds.
I've read a few true stories about love which are sharpen, not dulled by time and hardships, and I've seen it with my own eyes.
I hope that I can experience such love, and will be able to say to my future husband "I love you" and mean it, after 40 years of marriage.. or maybe even longer. Now ain't that sweet, eh?
