The Thing About Love

Love is a funny thing.

It snuck up on me, grew on me, taught me surprising things.

Love comes in so many packages: fraught with prickles and pokes, gratitude and passion. Every human emotion seems to apply as a condiment for love.

Of course, we get annoyed with our loved ones. Naturally, we all do. We spend most of our time with those that we love the best. Or we grow to love the ones we spend the most time with. And so, we see each other in all of our humanity, in all of our tenderness and frailities. The beauty as well as beauty's dark underbelly.

Then, of a sudden, all of that is stripped away. Love in its nakedness, in its purity, stands alone. At birth and at death. At these rare and isolated moments in time, love is shining and perfect. And I look at it with gratitude for the gift that it is.