On Love
The human longing for love has always been celebrated in song and story. No theme has inspired more songs, books, or films than love and its pursuit.
Without a romantic relationship — even the wrong kind — life begins to feel meaningless. We cannot bear to be alone.
We become slaves to love. An idolatrous attachment can lead us to break promises, rationalize any indiscretion, or betray any other allegiance — just to hold on.
Ernest Becker wrote: “The love partner becomes the ideal within which to fulfill one’s life… we want redemption — nothing less.”
We’ve taken the lyrics literally:
“You’re nobody ’til somebody loves you.”
“Without you, baby, what good am I?”
We maintain the fantasy that if we find our one true soulmate, everything wrong with us will be healed.
But Becker reminds us: “No human being can do such a thing.”
No one can carry their own existential burden — let alone yours. Romantic love can dominate our lives. Even avoiding love out of bitterness or fear means being controlled by its power.
Our fears and inner emptiness make love a narcotic. We medicate ourselves with it — then make foolish, destructive choices.
When you put the weight of your deepest hopes on another person, you crush them with your expectations. No person — not even the best one — can give your soul all it needs.
What if what our experiences are suggesting is true?
That it is in loving union and community that we find fulfillment. But maybe we just haven’t reached far enough.
If we reach past the object of our desire and grasp onto that indescribable eternal something that comes through them — and do not mistake them for the source but the conduit — we might find what we’re looking for.
What if we’ve only scratched the surface?
What if there is more to love?
What if there’s a better way to hold love?
C. S. Lewis put it starkly: “To love anything is to risk having your heart wrung and possibly broken.”
So where is my love safe? My family? My friends? Even the best loves cannot satisfy completely. No matter how good the relationship, it can never satisfy your longing for purpose or forever shut out the insecurity inside you.
C. S. Lewis called this “the longing for home” — a reach for something this world can’t fully give.
Earthly joys are echoes, signposts — meant to stir our desire for the real thing, not replace it.
We usually handle this two ways:
Blame the thing itself — chase the next partner, the next adventure, the next high.
Or lower expectations — call it maturity — shut down the part of us that wants more.
But what if these longings point to something real — a home we were made for?
“If I find in myself a desire no experience in this world can satisfy… I was made for another world.”To love at all is to be vulnerable.
