Is Love Hard?

Love is scary. Love challenges our identity. These statements are true in a sense,  but not all the time in all ways. Our culture has a lot of sad, angry, and bitter stories about loving.

Try on this idea:

Loving is easy. Specifically, loving you is easy.

It’s true. Loving is simple and self sustaining. Easy. No loss, no sweat, no stress needed.

We are often told that loving means sacrifice, effort, work, heartache, and general unpleasantness.  Life does have all those hard things. They are not love, even when they happen at the same time.

Correlation is not causation. Coincidence is not causation. Random phenomena are not causation. Passive aggressive statements are not love. All the crap that gets attached to love in our heads, none of that is love.

The hard stuff has a lot to do with expectations. When we love we mix in other desires. If you love me you will___ . That is not loving, that is demanding. Unfortunately, we accept it as normal, and base our view of loving on it.

Hope has a place in life, but it is problematic if conflated with love. My hopes are wonderful only as long as I remember that hope is about the future, and I never know the future. Love is a present time thing- I can only love now, not later.  Hope and love don’t exist in the same time frame. Leave each in it’s place, and things will be easier.

Imagine going to up random strangers and saying “Loving you is easy.” Imagine the next homeless person who accosts you. Instead of shrinking back in fear, what if you looked her in the eyes and told her that loving her is easy. What do you think the odds are that anyone has ever told her that simple truth? Maybe you won’t change the course of her life, but maybe you will make that moment better.

Find a friend. Tell them “Loving you is easy” and, even better, “Loving me is easy”. Now go find a mirror. You know what to say when you see yourself.

Practice. We’ve all got a lot to unlearn about love.