Lessons on the Road to Love

 The journey to find love is a bewildering and complex endeavor. Some people are lucky enough to meet the love of their life at an early age. While others may never do so. There are those who have many loves over the course of a lifetime while others spend a lifetime loving just one person. For ages, lyricists have been trying to capture the mystery of love. Their most pertinent questions include: What is Love? What’s Love Got to Do with It? And How Deep is Your Love?

 

Personally, I think Love is a Many Splendored Thing. It can be Modern, and it can be Endless. There’s No Ordinary Love. There’s a Higher Love, a Look of Love, and if you can find it, a Love Shack (It’s down the Atlanta Highway, I believe). Love is blind and there’s Blinding Love. I’ve been lucky enough to love and to be loved. And sadly, yes, I’ve been unlucky in love. 

 

When it comes down to it, finding love is an educational process. You have to learn That You Can’t Hurry Love. But when it finally happens, it’s quite magical. Even if it may have just been puppy love. Like many, my initial love was in high school. I officially felt the Power of Love. It was intoxicating and innocent. At this stage, young lovebirds are crazy in love and Addicted to Love. That is until they suddenly aren’t. Enter lesson No. 2: Love Bites and Love Stinks. Your first love may have also dished out your first helping of heartbreak with a side of Tainted Love. Raise your hand if you’ve encountered someone who Gives Love a Bad Name. 

 

That’s when you learn that Love is a Battlefield, but Pat Benatar didn’t coin the phrase all’s fair in love and war. That axiom goes as far back as 1578 and English poet John Lyly's romantic novel, "Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit." I think Mr. Lyly was more of a lover than a fighter because the working title of his tome was, If You Love Someone Set Them Free. I don’t know if Lyly was lovesick or not, but heartbreak can mess with a lovestruck mind. You’ll do anything to get her back, you’ll ask anyone to Send Her My Love, and you’ll end every unreturned email and text with I Will Always Love You.

 

The next lesson to grasp is that time does bring healing. After you recover from romantic setbacks, the search to find Somebody to Love resumes. The quest may seem unending. Thoughts of I’d Do Anything for Love consume your mind. When you’re single you suddenly forget what love is like. You find yourself yearning and telling your friends that you Want to Know What Love Is. But When Loves Comes to Town your world is again radiant. The air is cleaner, the sun is brighter, and the birds are happier. Because When you Love a Woman (or a man) everything is better. You’ve realized that All You Need is Love. You’ve found your True Fine Love; you’re riding the Love Train through the Tunnel of Love where all you hear are Silly Love Songs. When you’re apart, you FaceTime and say, I Just Called to Say I Love You. Then you whisper schmoopie things into the phone like I Just Can’t Stop Loving You and Love Will Keep Us Together.

 

Personally, the course of true love never did run smoothly, and my journey to discovering love wound through more deserts than the river Nile. I marveled at my friends who got married right out of college. I wondered when my time would come. I felt like I had a lot of love to give, I just had to find somebody who would let My Love Open the Door. Thankfully, my heart hit paydirt when I met Beautiful Karla.

 

Her love Makes the World go ‘Round. It may not have been love at first sight, but it was pretty close to it. Possibly fourth or fifth sight. I love her to pieces, and I love her to death. The greatest thing is that she loves me just as I am; moods, issues, and love handles included. I relish her tender love and care. 

 

She loves so well. She’s memorized the love handbook and runs its plays with Tom Brady like precision. Her love is patient and kind. 

It protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres. 

It never fails or boasts. 

It isn’t easily angered or self-seeking. 

She keeps no record of wrongs. 

She’s an eternal optimist who always looks for the best.

 

I’ve never bragged about being the quickest study. Like the lawyer who failed the bar exam or the doctor to had to repeat the boards it seems like I had to learn these lessons more than a few times over. But with Beautiful Karla I finally aced the test. Finding her makes all the years of love-detention worth it. Because being loved by the right person can make any love-school dropout feel like a Supreme Court Justice or the Surgeon General. 

 

Love is a verb and love is a choice. It certainly takes work. But don’t give up and don’t Stop (in the Name of Love). And that’s the final lesson. If you’re on your 25th year of marriage or still searching for the one that captures your heart, keep working and keep looking. Because the real deal is worth all the platinum albums in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. 

 

Have a wonderful Valentine’s Day as you celebrate your Crazy Little Thing Called Love.