For a few months now I've been following on Instagram a woman who left her country to live in the U.S. Each time my feed opens with her name my heart leaps a little as I prepare for the next rise or fall on the roller coaster that is her life. Her recent posts include delightful quotes about men who lie or turn out to be less than she expected, and I find them interesting to read.
And I cringe.
Dating is tough. I still remember the days of wondering if he liked me as much as I liked him and doing whatever I could to gently let down the ones who liked me more than I liked them. No one really enjoys hurting someone's feelings, but that's all part of the game. When I see these types of posts on my feed, I want to grab this woman and hold her and tell her to follow her path.
What I don't understand, though, is the pressure we place on ourselves and other people as we go through this process. We scrutinize every detail of every conversation and text and facial expression and wonder what's wrong with us or them and create this shroud of guilt that clouds it all. Yet, at the end of the day, some people will like us. Some won't.
Period.
We lose a lot of life worrying that something is wrong with us and wondering what's wrong with other people. I'd much rather spend it loving people. That's a scary thought because sometimes we love people who don't love us back. Sometimes we love people who cannot love us back. Sometimes we love people we don't want to love us back.
I think that might be the real circle of life...but I digress.
Paul wrote that the "greatest of these is love," and at the risk of taking the scripture out of context, I will say I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. When I think of this statement I am blown away by the idea of "greatest." Love is bigger than anything any of us can imagine, and I wish we spent more time loving the people around us and less time worrying about whether its reciprocal.
Or permanent.
Or logical.
Because it's not.
It's just the greatest.
I wish I could tell this woman to enjoy the moments she has now and the men who enter and leave her life. Some people really are not meant to be there forever, but that doesn't mean we cannot enjoy them while they are here. Love isn't about longevity or compatibility or any other box we create to define it. It just is.
And it's the greatest.
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