Liefde, Amour, Amor, Amore, Die Liebe, Love

It's a word that gives me much grief. It's a word that produces more questions than answers. It's a word that on any given day I could crave or I could reject. At times I know its emotion and its result but then again I can’t define it – I don’t know what it looks like.

I’ve rolled my eyes at its over-used betrayal and embraced its less frequent silent moments. I’ve questioned its ability to overcome doubt, fear, hate, solitude, and errors. I compare its strength to my weak hands and imagine that I will only drop it. It’s a word that I don’t understand and yet I plunged into the sea to ‘find’.

They say it’s a feeling not an emotion. They say it’s a necessity to mention and a burden to bare. I thought it was a verb but the intention of one’s action is circumstantial at best. Some demand attention in the name of its decent. Some use it as a weapon but one must ask – is that possible? If this word is joy, peace, unconditional, positive, and uplifting how can one use it as a weapon?

In my child’s eye’s it’s all she knows. In my eyes it’s all I’ve lost. In my mother’s eyes it’s all she wants. We look to my mother’s mother and wish it’s all she had. We freeze in the reality that people grow, people hurt, and people leave and we long for its comfort.

There is a problem in our understanding of this word. We try to ‘find’ it as if it’s a reward and not already in us. We expect it versus give it. We attempt to mold sand into our vision of what it is. We believe others are somehow doing it more ‘right’ or ‘better’. We feel compiled to adapt to it the way our father’s did before. We fail to first find it in ourselves without the influence of the projection of others.

The worst setback is that we refuse to deserve it because we don’t understand it and we refuse to give it because we fail to see it in ourselves.