Life’s Disguises (Love)

September 13, 2004

Life is a magnificent mystery and adventure, filled with discoveries. The older one gets (and I speak from experience) the more one is able to recognize that the true values in life are not what appears on the surface. I have collected a dozen of life’s disguises, and will share them with you over the next few weeks.

The first of life’s disguises is love. Most people see love as a feeling, an emotion, or even sexuality. That wonderful experience we call “falling in love” (also called “puppy love”) is a magical phase of life. Most of us are able to recall falling in love the first, second and perhaps many times. The reality is what we call “falling in love” is actually infatuation, and does not last. That is why, as my fellow Mississippian B. B. King would say, when “the feelin’s gone,” so is the “love,” or what we mistake love to be. The only “fix” for those hooked on this interpretation of love is to go from one “falling in love” to another “falling in love”.

Judith Viorst put it this way, “Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway.“

So what is love? Poets and bards have tried to answer that one for a long time. It’s easier to say what love is not. Let me throw out my answer to this ageless question. (Buckle your seatbelt.)

Love is time. That’s right, T-I-M-E, and I don’t mean the magazine. When we say we love someone, we want to spend time with them. And if we say we love someone, and do not “make time” for them, our actions contradict our words. Go back to young love. You were inseparable, right? But that is infatuation. Fast forward ten, twenty-five, or even fifty years. Maybe you are no longer making “goo goo eyes” at each other, but if you still have the joy of spending time together, that’s love. Time enhances love, and love savors the time. (And by the way, after almost eleven years, I enjoy spending as much time with Anita as I can!)

There is a theological dimension to this, as well. Saying we love God, and not making Sabbath for Him doesn’t ring true. I have a feeling God is much more ready to spend time with us than we are with Him. The ultimate miracle is eternity, negating even death. In eternity with God; a thousand years will be as a day, and a day as a thousand years.

Love is a symbol of eternity, wiping out all sense of time, erasing the idea of a beginning and all fear of an end.