Love, The Way It Should Be

     I like to ponder this topic, love. Perhaps it is because I am a romantic idealist, two words that should never be put together, but there you go. P.B.S. actually featured a special on love which included all types of love, not just romantic, but parental love, the love of siblings and of course romantic love. It was called The Mystery of Love and began with a quote from Jung, I have again and again been faced with the mystery of love... To speak of partial aspects is too much or too little, for only the whole is meaningful.
      One of the most compelling love stories included  was the story of a woman who had a love for Dante's Divine Comedy. This woman had determined in her mind to make the same walk as Dante from Florence to Rome, when she got to Rome she found a man standing by the gates of a library, a Virgil scholar. In a twist of fate that parallelled Dante's story and his love for Beatrice, this woman fell in love with this man at first sight. Upon their first meeting he proclaimed to her that they were going to marry and that she was the love of his life. As their life progressed and they made plans to marry he was diagnosed with brain cancer, they had their wedding in the hospital, she stayed by his side until the end. Not really the happy ending of the movies, but love has a purpose and that purpose is to teach us, love makes us better, it is unselfish.  Love seeks to please the other person, love gives.
     To have the experience of loving and being loved by someone is the greatest experience in life. Love does not seek to change the one you love, after all you fell in love with that person because of who they are. Love sees the very best, all the wonderful things about that person that endear them to your heart. There is safety in love, you can be who you are and share your heart with your loved one. Two people in love should be best friends. I have concluded that in order for love to be the way it should be you should like the person you love,  let the person you love know, not just that you love them, but why you love them, all of the wonderful things you see in them and watch love grow stronger.