“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13, New Testament of the Bible
I met with a friend the other day. He hasn’t dated much, and is now in his early 30s. He has a new girlfriend in his life.
“I just don’t know.” he said. “I always thought it’d be love at first sight, you know, like the movies. I mean, I like her and all, I just don’t know if she’s the ‘one’.”
“I understand.” I responded. “And, life isn’t like the movies. And love doesn’t always come at first sight. Sometimes, it takes time to root in, to blossom, to grow. You may not know if she’s the ‘one’ right now, but in due time, you will. In the end, love is a choice. You get to choose if she’s the right one for you.”
In our get-everything-quick, right-now, no-waiting-at-all culture, this answer didn’t satisfy.
But, having been married for 25 years, I can honestly say that I’m right. Love isn’t like the movies. Love isn’t always at first sight. Sometimes it takes time to know. It takes years to root in. It takes a lifetime to grow. And, love is a choice. As humans, we don’t always want to show love towards others, especially the ones closest to us. The closer we are to people, the more humanness, annoyances, and deficiencies we see. So, we must make the decision again and again, to love.
Sometimes, that decision is easy. Sometimes, it’s hard. But it’s always a choice. In the covenant of marriage, you made that choice on your wedding day when you said, “I do.” And thus, you shall. For my friend who’s still deciding if she’s right for him, he gets to decide whether to pursue loving her or not.
For humanity, we also get to decide. To the person who cuts you off in traffic, or treats you rudely on the phone, or insults your character or competency…we must choose love. In today’s world, there’s so much hate. So much division. So much disunity.
So, let’s be different.
Let’s be kind.
Let’s choose love.
I’ll end with a quote from the classic book called Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery by surgeon and instructor at Yale, Dr. Richard Selzer. In it, he relays a real-life story about love as a choice. It’s been quoted millions of times. I’m about to make it a million and one.
I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve.
Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seemed to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry-mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks.
“Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.”
She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles.
“I like it,” he says. “It’s kind of cute.”
All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze.
One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.
To those who’ve said “I do”, you’ve made your choice.
It means “I choose you.”
It means “I will not give up on you.”
It means “No matter what, this kiss will always work.”
…but the greatest of these…is love.
