Musings on the subject of love.

As evidenced by my previous post, I have been thinking much about love. It's an interesting thing to consider. And this is the vein of my thoughts on the subject:

We first have to be loved to understand what love is. We learn love from our parents and our families and the love we feel from them makes us feel important and special and happy. But if we stop right there, we really miss the point of love. The next step must be to learn to love others. We love our mother, our father, our brothers and sisters and grandparents. Eventually as we grow, we love our friends and cousins and teachers. But if we stop at that point, we still don't fully comprehend what love is. (At that point, it is still pretty selfish, because it's easy to love people who already love you.)

Christ taught the unthinkable idea of loving even the people that hate you. He said to love those who hurt you and persecute you. He said that you should forgive every time someone hurts you and keep loving them no matter what they do. You should treat everyone how you would want them to treat you. So we see that love isn't something to be hoarded with a select few people. It really is for everyone of every land and even for people who really don't seem to deserve it.

I think that as we progress through our lives, we must grow in our love. It starts when we are only babies but it can continue through our whole lives. There are always opportunities to love others, to show compassion and kindness, to exercise patience, to listen and to forgive. It's not some pipe dream or fantasy for a better world-- it's a reality that actual human beings can learn as they grow and progress through life.