Becoming Ms. Frizzle

Love is a verb, not a feeling.

This is not news to me, but it was a great reminder that I got last night at youth from a junior in high school (a guy actually). If you look up love in the dictionary it will probably say that love is a noun and that it means something like "a feeling of great passion." All I have to say is, bologna! Love is putting another person's needs before your own. It is making a risk to take care of someone it. It's an action of sacrifice.

Obviously this weekend there was a lot of talk about "love" everywhere thanks to Valentine's Day, but as usual we all bought into the hearts made out of sugar, balloons, and chocolate. If we are to truly emulate true love, we aren't supposed to just buy flowers and chocolate, but to honestly try to walk in the other person's shoes.

Another point (while I'm up here on my soap-box of sorts), love is not just meant for those that we are romantically involved with. We are instructed to love everyone just as we love ourselves. This is where the English language makes the word love very complicated. My friend Sam would reference the three different love words in Greek to help explain the process. I am not a Greek scholar nor can I fully explain love (honestly, who can?). But what I know is that we should all strive to love one another by not always putting our feelings and hopes and dreams before everybody else in the world. We as Americans have become very selfish (hello American Dream)! We have begun to turn a blind eye to those that are hurting around us because we love our money so much (worship it might correct in some situations) and because we're afraid that we might get hurt when helping and loving someone else.

So I don't know that I have any "real" advice, but here's my suggestion for the day: get out there and risk loving people. Risk doing something. It's not enough to feel compassion or simply passion for those around you, you must do something about it. I realize that I am not the best at following my own advice on this one, so I am also saying this for my own benefit.

Remember actions speak louder than words=doing an act of kindness/love for someone else speaks louder than saying that you love them.