"Love Is..." -Michael Crichton

"Most of the people I know confuse love with possession. It's easy to see why; it's built into the fundamental assumptions of our culture. "You're mine," says the popular song, "and we belong together." Hardly anyone stops to question the sentiment.

As soon as we feel love, we immediately attempt to possess. We speak confidently of my boyfriend, my wife, my child, my parent. We feel justified in holding expectations about those people. We consider that perfectly reasonable.

Why? Because all our concepts of love ultimately derive from romantic love — and romantic love is furiously, frantically possessive. We want to be with our lover, to have them to ourselves, to feel their eyes on us, to consume their minds and bodies...to possess them.

So strongly do we equate love with possession that we may even feel if someone doesn't want to possess us, they don't really love us. Yet I would argue that what we call romantic love is not love at all. It's a kind of emotional storm, an overpowering, thrilling attraction — but it isn't love.

Because real love isn't possessive. It can't be. We'd all agree that love involves giving, not taking. Yet the desire to possess actually springs from the lover's own need — the need for approval from the beloved, for support from a parent, for straight A's from a child, for status, for financial security — for something. A possessive lover is overly focused on what he's getting, not what he's giving. The lover may dignify his dependency with the name love, but it's a lie. How can you really love somebody when you're dependent on them for things you need? That isn't love, that's just manipulation to keep the needed stuff coming your way. Robert Palmer sings about being "addicted to love," but nobody really is. People are addicted to their needs.

And love isn't the same as need. It just isn't.

Of course, a loving relationship will produce interdependencies. But all too often, the pleasure of freely giving changes to a fear of possibly not getting. It's just that this person — your husband, your girlfriend, your child — is suddenly so important to you. You worry about what's going to happen. What they're going to do. And at that moment, love stops.

People sometimes wonder if they're feeling real love. These same people never wonder if they're sexually aroused, or sad. Then what's the problem about recognizing love? Most often, because they're sensing a conflict: they're feeling the depth of their need, not the heights of their love.

There are ways to know real love. It feels calm. It's steady, and it can easily last a lifetime. It's nourishing — people grow under its influence. They become who they really are, and now what someone expects them to be. Real love isn't blind; on the contrary, people feel understood, accepted for who they really are. It's healing. People recover.

So whenever you hear that love is blind, or love can't last, or love is destructive, you can be sure that you're hearing a description of lust, or desire, or need. And it's an accurate description, because needs really are transient and destructive.

But love is something else entirely. An emotion of deep caring that asks nothing in return, an emotion that is fulfilling without any expectation at all, is so rare that most people in our society can't imagine it. They can't imagine feeling it, or receiving it. They may even come to believe it doesn't exist. But it does.

And it's the best thing there is. "
 
-Michael Crichton, 1988
The preceding is of no way owned by the author of this blog and is the sole work of Michael Crichton, author of many novels, including The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park.

Nails

I was at youth group. People were singing. I was sitting down, as usual, thinking about how much I hate God. One of my friends stood next to me in the isle, noticing how down I was. When our youth pastor got up after the song, he nailed my feelings to the wall:

"I know the whole message today was about how God proves throughout the Bible that he is a good God, but while we were singing, I couldn't get this question out of my head: what is it that keeps me from believing that? So, I think we should take a minute or so to just... think about that...."


When the next song started playing, my friend sat down next to me. He asked if I was ok. When I didn't respond, he put his arm around me. I looked up, reached around my neck, and ripped my necklace apart. I tossed it to the side of the bench....

My friend got me up, brought me into the other room, and talked to me. He asked me questions, I told him what was wrong, and showed him my arm. Then he did something I will never ever forget. He showed me his  arm. His clean, scar-free, muscular arms. The exact opposite of my red, marked-up, beaten arms. He told me it was a miracle he didn't have scars. All over his arms. Like me. He said he had been there, and knows exactly what it feels like. The most traumatic thing that happened to him was the recent death of his grandpa. He would go into his room and just bleed, write FUCKED UP on his arm, deep cuts.

He told me he had hated God. He said he's seen people go down the tubes, throw away their lives, go to drugs, go to alcohol, run to sex. He said they were ok for a while. Yet their lives always made a turn for the worst. Looking at me, he said, "It's ok to be mad at God. Your life will be ok for a while, be fun, look good. But pretty soon," he said, pointing at both our arms, "this happens."

We went back into the main room because youth group was over. He told me he was always there for me, always able to talk to me. We now both had someone to talk to. He looked at me necklace, and asked me why I chose it. A rose. "It's the most beautiful flower, and the ugliest when it dies." I honestly chose it because a part of me hoped it would symbolize true love, hope. Yet there it was, broken. My friend lifted his necklace, a brown, beat-up cross. He told me it was his grandpa's.

He lifted it up over his head and put it around mine.....

"Whenever you look at this, remember: there's a nail here, a nail here, and a nail here. The person under those nails died for you. He loves you."

He then proceeded to tell me that he would yell at me, out of love, if he ever saw marks on me again....