Nothing lasts forever. Even our beautiful blue planet will one day meet its demise. Everything that has ever lived will one day die. Death is immutable.
But in today's world, time moves faster than ever. We live in an age of motion. We're rarely given much time to pause, reflect, and understand. Our news cycle rarely lasts longer than 24 hours. By the time you're finished reading this, someone somewhere has already thought of the next big technological breakthrough. Even our sports teams move fast: remember 4 years ago when the San Francisco 49ers lost the Super Bowl by 3 points? They went 2-14 this year, and had trouble selling tickets to their own fans. The sand of our societal hourglass seems to flow at supersonic hyper-speed. In no field is this more apparent than in the area of love, specifically with young adults.
I, for one, am no expert on love, and I don't pretend to be. Outside of my family, I've only felt real love once, maybe twice. I've had intense infatuations, I've felt the hormonal reactions of my youthful libido, but true love has been a rare occurrence for me, and I'll bet it's a safe assumption that most people my age haven't experienced true love many times either. Who has time for love? Life doesn't make finding love easy. It hides it behind layers of patience and circumstance. It disguises it in the form of sex and necessity. Now more than ever, love is harder to find simply because people rarely stop to recognize it. Getting a good education and career take precedence over matters of the heart. Spending your free time having fun and enjoying your youth is preferable to finding someone you truly connect with. Those are of course valid excuses, but this one isn't: love takes too much time and effort.
Today's generation of young people demand instant results. Nothing is worth it if it takes too long to get to them. Cell phones are a perfect example of this. We couldn't wait to get home to use the Internet, so we created smart phones. We didn't want to type in those long website names into an address bar, so we created Apps. We shouldn't have to learn how to spell when texting, so let's create something that fixes our errors for us. We certainly didn't want to have to wander around town looking for a friend's house, so thank goodness someone thought of Google Maps. I'm not saying that these inventions aren't important or useful, but have you ever seen someone flip out because their phone isn't doing what they want? Now imagine the impatience they'll have with people who don't do what they want. Simply stated, people don't want to deal with things they don't have control over, and love can feel like a runaway locomotive.
However, the destination of that train could be a harmonic sanctuary. There is a reason why love holds the distinction it does. Love is not overrated. It's not something that should be scoffed at or dismissed easily. It can be the source of our greatest strength. It can guide us through dark times and winding roads. It can cleanse our souls of all ill will and depravity. But love needs time to grow, and too often it's growth is stunted by immature petulance. The best things in life are stable. They're the rocks that we build our church upon. Love can be a part of that foundation, but only if we learn how to use the tools.
