"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud." 1 Corinthians 13:4
Living on my own at a largely Christian school and getting involved in organizations with people from a wide array of backgrounds has taught me a lot about love and how people express it. These circumstances have also helped me shape my own definition of what love is, especially in this specific day and age — and the words of St. Paul still ring true to me.
However, another important perspective to take about love is to expand even more on how Paul ended that verse — which is what love is not. Having studied people's reactions and feelings about love for almost a full school year, there are a few things that I have found to be frequently cited in love's name, but which, upon further examination, do not fulfill the definition of love that St. Paul left for us.
Love is not:
Pitying
Often times, it is easy to fall into the habit of feeling bad for someone who opens up to you about a struggle they have, especially if that struggle is something that you have not personally experienced. And that's important because it shows that you took the time to care about another person's suffering. But what I have found is that love is what you do with that gut reaction to care. Do you fall into the passive position of staying an arm's length away and pitying them, or do you lend them a listening ear — regardless of if you have advice they can use? Love is an investment.
Exclusive
It is easy to love those who hold our same beliefs. But love's umbrella does not abruptly stop before covering our adversaries, our skeptics or our enemies — it is all encompassing. The more that people get to know each other, the more opportunity there is to discover differences in opinion or lifestyle. But love is finding the similarities and accepting (or at least attempting to understand) everything else. One thing that has been made abundantly clear to me, though, is that everyone has a valuable perspective to listen to and cherish — which is why it is impossible for love to be exclusive.
"Fixing"
Human beings are not broken, which means that no one is less than any other person. Therefore, to act patronizingly towards another person by showing them love with the end goal of "correcting" whatever you thought was wrong to begin with, in my opinion, is not love. As a Christian myself, I will say that I have seen many of my peers enter this mindset with the best of intentions. In practice, however, I have found that it can lead to insincerity and masked motives — which is a slippery slope in regards to fostering loving relationships. This is not to say that one must participate in actions that go against their beliefs or advocate for them, because that, too, would be disingenuous. But trying to change someone by way of molding them, as opposed to perhaps praying for God to guide them in His direction, is putting yourself above them in a way that authentic love does not allow for.
Words
As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. The word "love" is used so often that it has gone from a word that was saved for the most sacred relationships to one that slides off the tongue as easily as any other. And in many ways, this increase has been such a catalyst in spreading love and articulating in a meaningful way how much people care for each other. But because it does not always carry as much weight as it have previously, the necessity for actions to back up this sentiment is more prominent now than ever before. And again, this point just leads back to being sincere with how we feel, and I truly believe that if everyone were to make the people who they say "I love you" to feel that love through genuine kind acts as opposed to just a yearly "Happy birthday girl, love you so much!" Facebook post, then no one should ever start feeling unwanted or lonely--which, unfortunately, so many people do.
I am no love expert, and I truly believe that there is no end to what we can learn about this topic. But just from my experience, I can confidently say that these few monikers are disguised as love a lot of the time — especially on a college campus. And whether you are Christian or not, I think it is safe to say that St. Paul was on to something when he wrote that phrase to the Corinthians. My hope is that this, too, sheds at least a little bit more light on what you know about love.
