Learn to Love

I just watched episode 12 of "John Doe", a 2002 TV series about a guy who has amnesia, but somehow knows everything from the migratory patterns of Canadian geese to the checksum of a disk image of the first linux distribution. However... the specifics of the show are not really what this post is about...

This episode really pricked my interest with the last few words that were said. John and his love interest, Rachel, are deciding to continue their relationship, and this is portrayed by each of them saying they will "learn to love" a food that the other likes but they don't (John, licorice; Rachel, vienna sausage). At first glance it's just a "awww that's cute" moment, but it really struck me, because of the way it portrays love.

Most of the time TV, movies, and even books (and especially magazines) tell us that love is something we cannot control, that love is a flush, a rush, an explosion of feeling that we cannot deny, cannot stop, cannot temper. To me, that makes love seem very much like a bad temper... and I really don't want to love the way I get angry, because I never stay mad... and what would that say about my love?

No, love is more than just emotion, more than just a thing our bodies tell us and we are helpless to create or resist. No, love is a choice, something to seek education in, to "learn to love", to continue to experience, to work on, to spend yourself in. Like anything we build, time must be spent on it to make it beautiful, and it shouldn't be thrown away at a moment's malcontent.

Interestingly, I am now thinking of more than just the type of "love" that we see in various media, really, I'm talking about any relationship or friendship too... We need to be friends with more than just the people we "click" with! Learning to love, learning to care for people, to empathize, that's what being truly Christlike is! I really hope that we can all learn to love this Christmas season, learn to bear each other's burdens, take other's sufferings on ourselves, just like Emanuel, God with us, came to be a man, and take all our deserved pain on himself.