I know what love isn’t

There is little in this world that’s more frustrating than trying to love someone that no longer wants to be loved by you.

In this increasingly capitalistic society, we are taught to believe that if one is willing to pay the adequate or higher price for something, that it will be yours. That everything has a price. The person who coined that term has probably never loved someone who no longer loved them back.

It’s one thing to have an unreciprocated crush. I would know a bit about that because yup, never been overly popular with the ladies. But yeah, unreciprocated crushes usually offers you, at most, just a hint of what may have been. In most cases, it’s like grasping at cotton candy. But if you were in a wholesome loving relationship but for one reason or another, see that love evaporate over time, it can be tearfully frustrating to try and make that person ‘re-love’ (apologies for this ghastly term) you again. Especially since you’ve properly experience what it was like to love and be loved by that person. It’s a little like tasting a drug that removes all your anxieties and worries for a day but you’re told after that you’re never going to be able to taste it again for the rest of your existence.

I’ve spent some portions of my life in this predicament. Don’t get me wrong, not here to sling mud at ex-lovers. I believe a lot of issues in relationships should be co-owned after all. But I have found myself kicking at the rafters, desperately wanting a person to love me back or in some cases, love me like they used to. In most cases it’s like quicksand, make more of a play and you sink in even further into oblivion. Never mind that you’ve realised the folly of your ways and wish to turn back the clock through good deeds of redemption. To them, the hour has passed and you are required to now serve your sentence.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re willing to pay the ultimate price to ‘buy’ back that love. Your currency is no longer good. To have the capacity to purchase something and not to be able to own it belies the logic set by our world. That’s why it’s so achingly frustrating to us. That if I am willing to love you this much, then shouldn’t you love me back equally as much?

I’ve often thought about how love works in this world as opposed to the way love was intended to work by God. We’ve come to distill love down to a series of conditions. That love has to be proven for it to be reciprocated. That it has to somehow fit our self-centred lifestyle and world views. We’ve taken what was meant to be a world-changing force of nature and broken it down to ‘loves dogs’ and ‘hates red velvet cake’.

Humans have no capacity to truly love the way God does. To be able to do that would make us God, and there are few things I am as sure of in this world as ‘we are not God’. We are wired to love, that much is clear and certain. And we are compelled to seek ‘love’ that makes sense to us. But I’ve thought about the love that is offered by God to us and as far as I can tell, it’s the stupidest, most senseless and illogical love ever, if you base it on the standards of what love is in this world.

Imagine a lover that comes to you only when they want something. Who spends more time with other men/women than you. Who when they are going through problems, would seek solace either in their own arms, or the arms of another. Who never listens to anything you tell them but would often do the opposite even. Who rarely credits you when things are going well but almost always blames you when things are going wrong. Sounds like the biggest douchebag/bitch in the world right? But that’s really how we treat God. If God subscribes to the philosophy of love in this world then He would certainly make us ‘sleep on the couch for the rest of our lives’. But yet He chooses to love us, even though we often treat him like thrash.

There is so much heartache in this world that’s borne out of people just logically making decisions on what love should be. If I had a magic wand I would wave it around so that people in this world would learn to love a little illogically sometimes. After all, anything great in this world should require an element of toil and sacrifice. That we would learn to love a little like God, to punt when not many boxes are ticked. That we would be able to see the sincere and repentant love being offered by another and be able to find it within ourselves to love them back.