L is for Love

Love.

Nothing will play a bigger role in your life.

Nothing will bring you more joy. Or more pain.

Nothing will drive your decisions more. Nothing will be a bigger influence.

Love is an eternal motif. It is found in every great story.

Love is paradoxical. It is both culturally defined and an integral part of what makes us human.

There are a thousand, million, billion different types of love. The love you feel for your family. The love you feel for your friends. The love you feel for your romantic partner. The love you feel for yourself. The love you feel for your job, your pets, your home, your beliefs, your peers, your hobbies, your favorite possessions, your favorite ice cream flavor . . . the list goes on forever. And each of them is different, a different kind of love, than the last. Yet they are all love.

How can I possibly talk to you about something so ubiquitous, something so universal? What can I possibly tell you that will help you when it comes time for your own experiences with love?

Ultimately, as with everything else baby girl, you will have to decide what love means for you. You will have to decide what love feels like. What love looks like. What love acts like. What love's limits are.

There are many who would say I've been lucky in love. I met your father when we were 16. We fell in love almost immediately, though it wasn't the romantic kind of love, not at first. That came later. That may be why our relationship is so strong; it is one layer of love built on another, different kind of love. We met when we were 16, and now, 14 years later, we are expecting you. And our love keeps growing. One layer of love added to the previous.

So I've been lucky in love. Yes. Blessed. I would say everyone who has experienced love has been lucky. Blessed. But those who would say that our experiences with love have been easy would be wrong. The truth is, love isn't easy. Not true love. Not lasting love. That's because life isn't easy, and love is the thread that connects our lives, connects one day to the next, one moment to the next, one experience to the next.

Some of those transitions are jarring. Some are painful. Such is life. And love has to be there to make those jarring, painful steps.

Sometimes the steps are too much, and love is lost. Such is life.

Ultimately, it's up to you to decide when love has been stretched too thin. But know this: love is stronger than you think. It is stronger than faith. It is stronger than hope. Even when you have lost your faith, when you have lost your hope, even then, love remains. Love remains, often times long after things like common sense and personal safety and respect are gone. In times like these, there are two different loves at odds with each other: love of self and love of another. I can't tell you which trumps which. You will have to discover that for yourself when the time comes.

What I can tell you about love, or about my own experiences and discoveries about love, is this: I do not believe those who say the best you can do is simply love someone for who they are. There is some truth to that, yes. You have to have the ability to know who a person is, deep down, beneath all the pomp and circumstance and flair they put on to impress others. That person--the REAL person--is who you have to know and love, just as they are. But you do NOT have to love and accept the pomp and circumstance and flair. You do not have to love a person's decisions. You do not have to love a person's actions. Loving someone does NOT mean you have to accept their behavior as is, take it or leave it.

In my opinion, in my experiences with love, loving someone means not being able to imagine a life without them. It means you would rather argue with them than not have them around at all. It means they make you smile every time you see them . . . even if you are only seeing them in your mind's eye . . . even if you are only smiling on the inside. It means they are the first person you think of telling when something funny happens to you, or something sad, or something moving, or something surprising or amazing or scary or heartbreaking or thought-provoking, or simply something as trivial as wondering how it's possible that some fruit juices have twice as much sugar as sodas. Loving someone means you want to share your life with them, in all it's big and small moments.

But loving someone also means loving them enough to hold a mirror to their face, to not allow them to sell themselves short, to not accept self-destructive behavior, to always fight to raise them up, to support them to be the best they can be . . . to be the person deep down that you know they are. It means wanting the best for them even when they don't want the best for themselves. It means accepting their anger. No one likes the mirror being held to their face.

Loving someone means, when it's all said and done and the time comes for decisions to be made, being willing to walk away, being willing to give that person exactly what they want, remembering that ultimately it's the other person's decision about what kind of life they choose to have. You can't choose for them. Loving them means remembering that.

And love means always coming back to help that person fight their fight, even when it hurts. Love means being there for someone, no matter how little they deserve it.

Love means never giving up on someone.

And of course, the paradox: balancing the love of yourself with all of the above. Love means knowing when you have to love yourself more, knowing when the love of someone or something else becomes damaging to your own life. And, because love of others will always eventually result in a situation at odds with love of yourself . . . knowing where to draw that line. You cannot only love yourself, cannot always put yourself first. But you cannot only love others either. You cannot always put yourself last.

There are no wrong answers when it comes to love. You get to choose your own life. You get to define love for yourself. But remember, when struggling to define love for yourself, when struggling to find your balance, when struggling to decide on your next move, remember that love is not easy. Something so important, so big, so wonderful, was never meant to be easy. Even back in the 16th century, Shakespeare knew, "the course of true love never did run smooth."

You will have to fight for what you love. For those you love. You will have to fight yourself. You will have to fight others. You will be consumed with the most wonderful, terrible confusion and clarity. You will feel lost and found at the same time. You will want to escape your thoughts, and you will want to think of nothing else.

Yes, love is a fight. But this I promise you: it's worth it.

Even the loves that don't last. Worth it. Because they will, for the time you had them, have brought you the highest of all human emotions.

And the loves that do last? The loves that stay with you, that move your life, your identity, your soul, that flow through you like a river through a canyon until you are shaped into a new, deeper, more beautiful version of yourself?

Those loves are what put a smile on your face before you even open your eyes. Those loves are what puts the life in life.

Know that you are loved. Already your father and I love you more than you know. That love will never end, no matter what you do, no matter what you say. You are surrounded in love. You were conceived in love. You will be brought into the world already the focus of so many people's love.

And one of the things I'm most looking forward to about being a parent, about having created a new life to bring to the world, is that I'm giving one more soul the chance to know love.

I wish for you a life filled with a thousand, million, billion different kinds of love.