This I Believe
A few years ago in an English class we were reading romantic poetry. The teacher, along with many of my classmates, joined together in a ravenous pack to joyfully rip apart a poem that I, personally, had loved since the first moment I read it. A love poem, actually, one that, whatever the author originally meant by it, and however trite it is in today’s society, had always been a source of comfort to me. As I lowered my head and regretted ever bringing the poem up, I found myself reflecting sadly on the prospect that perhaps I was the only one left in the room who believed in love.
I avoided the eyes of my peers, feeling nearly crushed by the sudden weight of the jaded and dreamless pressed around me. I felt very young, very stupid, very naive. It wasn’t the first time I had ever been made to feel that way, and it certainly wasn’t the last.
However childish though, I still stand by my somewhat simple, slightly childish, rather bruised motto: I believe in love.
It’s strange to me to see friends so cynical. Sometimes I feel rather spoiled as I listen to them complain and realize that, compared to them, I really have very little to whine about. Still, I wonder how they came to be the way they are, and if I’m headed for the same fate.
Nevertheless…
I believe in love.
It doesn’t have to be the romantic kind, though I do believe in that as well, foolish as it may seem. But there are other places where love is present.
Love is present in the song a mother hums as she rocks her newborn. It’s there in the boy who teases his brother, but will defend said brother to the point of a schoolyard scuffle if anyone else dares to do the same. Love is what guides you when a friend calls in the middle of the night crying, love is what guides your friend when you are the one in tears.
It’s a struggle sometimes to keep hold of our beliefs when there are those around us who seek so vigilantly to change our minds. Even more of a struggle when the world we see around us seeks to disprove our beliefs.
But I believe in love.
Love still lives, though. If we let it, Love is what guides us. Love is what protects us. Love is what makes life worth living.
Love is what saves our souls.
I believe in love – and will continue to believe, even if all evidence of it vanishes forever. Something so powerful could not be the result of the imagination of hundreds of years of writers and artists. It could not be a shared dream of generations of dreamers, or a pretty story we tell ourselves. I see it in my home, I see it in my relationships with my friends, and I see it in my heart.
I believe in love.