Real Love
Everywhere we look, we see signs that something is seriously wrong in our society.
- 20% of us are addicted to sex, alcohol, and drugs of some kind
- One of nine men will spend some time of his life in prison
- Nearly 60% of our marriages will end in divorce
- 41% of ninth-grade students reported drinking alcohol in the past month
- One-quarter of all adolescents contract a sexually transmitted disease before they graduate from high school
- 4 out of every 10 girls in the U.S. will become pregnant at least once while in their teens and 80% of these pregnancies are unintended.
What is wrong here? What are people lacking in their lives that cause them to act out in all these unhealthy ways?
Unfortunately, we have tended to see all these behaviors as separate problems, and because of our near-sightedness, we have been quite unsuccessful in resolving them.
Now Imagine that I tell you I love you. I smile at you, speak kind words to you, spend time nurturing you. Understandably, you enjoy this, as we all would. Then the last five minutes, however; I start screaming at you and pointing out all your mistakes you have made, all while shaking my finger in your face and scowling with rage. I say, “Are you some kind of moron?!”
How loved do you feel now? That great feeling disappeared the moment I became unloving towards you, didn’t it? We’ve all experienced moments like this. For most of us, in fact, this has been a lifelong pattern. This kind of “love” is very disappointing and unfulfilling, because it vanishes when we make mistakes and when we fail to meet the expectations of those who “love” us. This kind of “love” is conditional. There’s only one kind of love, however; that can fill us up, make us whole, and give us the happiness we all want. This type of love is unconditional love or Real Love.
Real Love is the feeling of happiness all the time and this is the missing ingredient in our lives and the only thing worth perusing.