To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (7)

The other day, my mother told me that she thinks I know what love is now, so I thought I would think more deeply about what I know of it. Regrettably, we are hopelessly ill-equipped to talk about love in the English language. While we have one word for it, the Greeks had eight: eros, philia, ludus, agape, pragma, philautia, storge, and mania. So, I could conceivably dive into some analysis of the different forms love takes, as perhaps a Greek would do with their many words, but I don’t think I will because there was a thought that stuck with me that I reckon would be worth sharing.

When I left home at 18 for university, I quickly discovered the secret of the adult world: nobody (or hardly anybody) has a bloody clue what’s going on. By my estimation, for the most part, we are all people who are, as they say, just “going through it”. Life piles up: there’s a mountain of rubbish to deal with even on top of your regular workday, and it can be overwhelming. I’ve noticed, for instance, that as I’ve gotten older, in many ways people have become more graceful. Whereas in high school we were tormented by ideas of university professors rigidly adhering to deadlines and what not, I’ve more often found that professors are understanding when something comes up: being a (mental) health issue or something else.

This, of course, does not mitigate any responsibilities one has, but it is a recognition that the responsibilities demanded in the adult world are, frankly, a lot to deal with. There’s a learning curve, after all, and oftentimes it just takes time and energy to figure things out. It’s tempting, then, to feel that things would have been easier if only you’d known then what you know now. So it is that I’ve come to believe that God calls us to be in the present the people we’re destined to become, whether or not we’re ready for it. It’s as if He is in the place of the world itself, which demands things of us without asking whether we’re ready for it.

What I’ve said thus far is all fairly self-evident, but how does it relate to love? Of course, if you’ve heard the verse “God is love” (1 Jn 4:16), one might know where I’m going with this. Love is, like life, demanding: perhaps it is the most demanding thing that can be asked of us. Catholics are fond of saying that love is a gifting of oneself to another. I take no dispute with this. Those in love become naturally dependent and bound to one another insofar as they are able. But what could be harder than gifting oneself to another? I daresay, nothing is. In its absolute sense, it requires an unspeakable amount of self-sacrifice and commitment. Much in the same way that we are just “going through” everything else, we can only approach love in this way: we can’t anticipate all of the challenges we may face, and this, coupled with the emotional stakes of loving someone else, can mean some life lessons that are simply learned the hard way. As such, in love so as in life, we are sometimes tempted to say, “If I knew then what I know now.” Thus, love, too, calls us to be now the person who we are someday called to be.

This is perhaps one of the key things I would say I’ve learned about love: ultimately, it is a journey of perpetual conversion to be more loving. Love is acting despite that burden everyday. In Rome, one of the priests I had the good fortune to meet told me how he responds when someone calls him a Christian: “No,” he said, “everyday I must become a Christian.” It is common parlance to say that someone loves someone else, and while I wouldn’t belittle using love as a verb, I wonder if perhaps it more accurately captures the act itself to say that “everyday I must love so-and-so”.

Love is another cross to carry, but it is the most wonderful to bear. St Paul said, “if I…do not have love, I am nothing.” (1 Cor 13:2) He was right. No doubt about it. So, not only as my own personal reflection but as words of encouragement, I would lastly say, for the love of God, not to give up on it. I wish I could tell you it’s easy to stay the course, but it’s not. It might mean making mistakes, just as I and many others have made, but love in its many forms is the only thing in the world worth having. Love will take you well beyond mere emotion into the very depths of being itself.