LOVE IS A CHOICE

Good Morning everyone! Ya'll alright? I'm feeling a little...mmm, I don't know. It's like I'm rested, but thinking about the rest of my day is exhausting me haha! So I'm just going to take my own advice and "Be Present". I'm going to be present at this moment as I write this post. We are on day 16! That's wild! So today's lesson is a cliche, you've heard it all the time, people say it so much that at this point it may just go in one ear and out the other, but it's true. Today's lesson is:

LOVE IS A CHOICE

It's not so much that I had to learn this lesson, but that I had to understand it. I believe a lot of people say it, but don't actually understand what it entails. So I'm going to share with you what I have come to understand it to mean.

One of the most common misfortunes about love is that most people understand it as a feeling. Love is not a feeling. There are some wonderful beautiful feelings that come with love, that are triggered by love, but love in and of itself is not a feeling. This is one of the reasons the divorce rate is so high; because we get hype up on this feeling and fall in "love", we are persuaded by our emotions to make a commitment because this person makes me "feel" this way, but once the feelings leave we feel like love did too. The feelings were but mere symptoms, but what we know about symptoms is they can apply to many other things. The common cold and influenza have very similar symptoms, but they are not the same thing.

How many of you have ever heard a married couple say "marriage is hard"? Well, that's because when you're married you learn the real definition of love, you're put in a position where you constantly have to choose love regardless of how you feel. (I am not married, I'm just going based off what I've seen and heard).

Another unfortunate thing about love is that a huge part of the world only associates it with romantic love. That is sad because some of the deepest love you will find on this earth exists outside of romantic love. There's sibling love, the love of a parent, there's the love between friends, and we can't forget the love of God who is Love.

Now, what do I understand "Love is a choice" to mean? It means that I will still choose to love you even when I don't feel like it. When I say I love someone, I mean it ever so purely. If my friends and I ( or my family and I) are in a weird space and aren't seeing eye to eye, I don't withdraw my love from them. I may have to take some time to myself because in wisdom I know that not doing so will exacerbate the issue; But, I don't withdraw my love. When my mother and I are arguing, I still call and check in on her. Yes, you are PISSING ME OFF RIGHT NOW MA, but "hey, are you ok? Alright just calling to check-in. I love you. Bye." If I always pick up my friend's child from daycare, out of love, and now we're in a fight, I'm still picking up your child as long as you're still comfortable with me doing so. I won't stop loving you and showing you love because life happens. We're humans, we're going to piss each other off, we're going to do things that the other may not agree with, but that should not affect the choice of loving them.

Take God for example. He is Love AND He teaches us how to love. Very often we do things that disappoint Him. If we look back at our lives, He has every reason to not want to deal with us anymore. He has every reason to walk away; but, He chooses to love us. He chooses to be patient, and kind, and protect, and all the things love does and love is for us. He is our greatest example of the greatest love.

Now, this doesn't mean staying in a toxic or abusive situation. I always say to exercise wisdom. You know your situation better than anyone, so please don't take this message the wrong way. All I'm saying is to not dilute love to just a feeling. We have to choose Love. Sometimes it's an easy choice when we're experiencing all of the warm and fuzzy symptoms of Love. Sometimes it's not an easy choice but a necessary choice. But inevitably it is still a choice. I believe if the world chose love more often, we would all be in a better place.

I love ya'll for reading, and I love ya'll for real!

- Woods

Lighting up the woods, one Syllable at a time