I can’t imagine falling in love
I listen to a lot of love songs. Mostly sad love songs. Today it was “Talking to the Moon” by Bruno Mars. Often it’s Alec Benjamin with “Let Me Down Slowly.” I like the pathos and the feeling that love songs create in me.
But that being said, I don’t understand them. I don’t understand love. I don’t understand marriage.
And when I say I don’t understand these concepts, I don’t mean that I don’t know what they entail, or what’s involved. Loosely speaking, love is consistently choosing another’s good over one’s one, and marriage is a lifelong commitment to loving one particular person. I understand that, and I’ve seen these concepts play out in the lives of my parents and brother+his wife.
What I don’t understand is why someone would ever make that choice, the choice to love. It’s hard to always choose another’s good over one’s own. I have a hard enough time loving my family and the people I’m around at the moment. How much harder would it be to choose at an instant in time that I will love the person in front of me for the rest of our lives? That I will always put their needs over my own–in sickness and in health, in good times and bad.
I’ve seen people who are sick. My mom went through about a decade of a severely debilitating chronic illness, and I don’t know how my dad held it together through all those years. How do you love someone who is hopelessly ill and suffering along in severe pain, and continue to love them day after day after month after year, without real hope that they’ll get better?
Is marriage worth that level of commitment? Personally, I don’t have anyone who I want to make that commitment to. And so I don’t understand all the love songs that I nevertheless enjoy listening to. Maybe someday I’ll understand; maybe someday I’ll fall in love and realize that it’s all worth it.
But until then, I’ll be happy in my singleness. Because being single rocks :)