LOVE IS GIVEN TO BE GIVEN

I've been given a real gift...an inside gift, an awakening as it were.

I was talking with a friend yesterday. She was widowed fifteen years ago; a couple years later, she met a man who became her companion. He passed away last year.

She had said before, and I really hadn't picked up on it until she said it again yesterday, that, now that her partner is gone, nobody loves her...that she really has nothing to live for because nobody loves her. She is a really likable lady, lots of fun, and she has many friends so I suspect that's why I missed the import the first time round.

We didn't get into a deep conversation about it, but I thought about that later. And I realized that she apparently sees "real" love as boy-girl love only...all else is nice but really, who's kidding whom, not real love.

Did that ever flash me back. The lady is my age, and I know that is what I believed for way too long...we discounted any love but a man's love. Probably because that is what we were raised on; i.e., the one essential in life is true love. True love is between a man and a woman, all else...friends, parents, pets, plants, jobs, hobbies...nice, but naught to do with love.

Clearly, our concept of love was sorely limited. Which probably explains why I couldn't comprehend having a pet until I was in my forties..and then, truth to tell, I had to learn to love him! I wonder if most of us back in the day weren't raised in the belief that the only love that counted was the physical love of another, all else was nice but not essential in life...to happiness in life.

Today, probably the most important fact in my life is that I have finally and fully accepted that the love I get, and, equally, the love that I give...to any other (to this bloody blog for heaven's sake!) is essential in and to my happiness...to my very being.

The ability to love and to be loved is a precious gift from God...freely given to be given. Pass it on.

Thank you.