Power of Love at 1:14 AM

So I wanted to right about love after reading this morning, and I thought to myself, 'Self, this is why you have a blog.' So here is a long winded entry about what the power of love means to me.

Huey Louis once sang,
"The power of love is a curious thing
Make a one man weep, make another man sing...
You don't need money, don't take fame,
Don't need to credit card to ride this train"
(Power of Love)

I remember listening to that song a lot on our jukebox when I was a little kid. I think that's part of the reason I saw love as this mysterious thing, that could be a blessing and a curse, but either way was something powerful and worth respecting. To this day I still hold to that opinion mostly, it's just that my understanding of it has deepened a bit since my childhood. Now I still see it the same way, love can make a man cry or sing, heck it's done both to me more than once. But I see it in a variety of different lights. One man cries because of a break up. Another cries because of loss of a loved one. Another because he never had one. I think now that love is less mysterious, and more just plain uplifting.

At some point about 10 years ago I had a revelation one day. I realized that one of the things people want more than anything is to be loved. It had come at a point when a couple people had been calling me and I couldn't figure out why they wanted to talk to me all the time. This was Junior High, probably one of the clearest points in life where it's easy to see that people need love (Usually in the form of approval and acceptance). It sort of hit me that that's what these kids had wanted. Part of the reason I could realize this was because that was what I wanted too. I was kind of a class clown in my band class, and I knew I loved the attention. Why would anyone else be different. This is still a belief/theory that I hold to strongly. People want and desperately need to be loved.

Oddly enough, even though we know we need it, we (I and other people I've noticed) often find more reasons to with hold it than to give it. But I think my situation is different,I say, I broke up with her because she's crazy. It's ok for me to talk bad about her because she's psyco. Or maybe so and so is trying to take something from me that is rightfully mine. Or maybe John said something offensive in church. I don't know why, but it's so easy for us to become the victim, which entitles us to with hold our love, even though often, that's the one thing that would make something better. Even in severe criminal cases I would argue that most are evil because they either chose to with hold love or too often in their lives, they experienced everything but love. I'm not trying to rob justice, but often we take an act of sin and use it to label a person, sometimes a good person. And I think a lot more of us do this than we would like to know. At least I think I do it more than I would like to admit. Sophocles wrote, "One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love." One of the beautiful things about love is that it is given even though rarely deserved. Even though we know we make mistakes and that many of us do not deserve it, we still hope for it more than anything.

Love for me is usually the answer to issues in life, mine and others. Do you love someone enough to let them go? Enough to watch over them? Enough to sit and console? Enough to sit and listen? Enough to drop what you're doing and go help? Enough to take criticism? Enough to be wrong? Enough to let someone else be wrong? =)

Here's the motivation for this post. I read this talk by Elder Wirthlin on Charity this morning (the awesome one in the Nov. 2007 Conference) and it's funny how every time I go back to it, that talk rocks my world. Anyways, he said a few things that made me want to write this for my own records. One of which is this quote:
"The greater the measure of our love, the greater is our joy. In the end, the development of such love is the true measure of success in life. "
Hmm, the true measure of success. At the end of the day, what else really matters. Love is what I remember, of all my friends I've had in college or on my mission or in highschool. I remember and revere the one's who really loved me. Heck, even girls I dated. I hated breaking up, but it was so much easier when I knew they genuinely cared about me. I think that is why I'm still friends with many of the girls I dated, because they had developed an ability to love, regardless of circumstance.

Now, what would happen if love for our fellow man ran a bit more rampant among us?

Here's the other quote I love- (same talk)
"consider your sacred duty to teach others to love the Lord and their fellowman. This is the central object of our existence. Without charity—or the pure love of Christ—whatever else we accomplish matters little. With it, all else becomes vibrant and alive. "
Yep, this is true. I want to have more concern for the people around me. I want to love the Lord a little more, because I know if I can, my life will switch from black and white to vibrant color. One thing I am amazed about is how happy I am in China and I think one of the main reasons for that is that I can feel the Lord's love for me. I just have to get better at passing it on.