Love Versus "The" Love

Mike Szydlo (homer 3132) poses a couple of heartfelt questions in his blog yesterday. We seek a love the spirit of which is captured so beautifully and hopefully in verse, song and prose. I find it puzzling that something so remarkably clear and desirous to most could be so difficult, even impossible, to attain. It makes no sense to me why love relationships, something that is supposedly so wonderful and to which most aspire, would be so hard and such demanding work, often times to the brink of and beyond the spirit's breaking point.

Is it even possible to find a partner, a soulmate, who would truly love us for who and what we are and be loved by us for the same? What happens when we let our need for love or the fear of loneliness lead us to settle for anything less? There are a lot of people out there in relationships who still feel unloved or find themselves lonely most of the time. Why do we hold out hope to find something that so readily eludes us? Other than to promote a socially acceptable context by which humanity procreates to perpetuate itself, is there any other viable reason to institutionalize any relationship? Does marriage in practice exist to license or sanction exclusive sex rights with so many, including those who would assert personal moral virtue or righteousness, breaking that sacred trust by infidelity? You certainly don't have to marry someone to enjoy their friendship or company.

In the end I think the difficulty rests in our equating "love" with the one true love in life that our instinct leads us to seek. As a celibate Roman Catholic priest, my life was filled with love. There has been no other time in my life when I was happier, when I felt better about who I was or what I was doing. My life was surrounded by people in meaningful ways from the time I woke up until the time I retired for the night. Yet instead of treasure all that I had to be thankful for, I listened to the loneliness that would gnaw at me an hour or two each night before bed. I had a life of "love," but instead gave it up in a futile search to find "the" love. Only now looking back do I realize that I had what I was looking for all along.

And so to my friend Mike and anyone else who would struggle with the questions he poses in his blog, I say focus your life not on the quest for "the" love but instead build your life around "love" and you will find what you are looking for.