The Inevitable Love-Post

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin if your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." - C. S. Lewis

This man is a genius. I know people who do seem to believe that they can avoid pain if they just never love, never give, and never feel. People who are afraid of their feelings. Who are afraid to love. And on a certain level, I wholeheartedly understand.
Love hurts. In fact, lots of the time, love hurts as often as it feels good. And love-pain is coincidentally the most painful sort of hurt there is. Because love, true love, whether platonic, familial, or romantic, is the most intimately unselfish act.
There are plenty of other ways to give and to be intimate. But with all the other ways to give, you give things. Money, food, stuff, time, work, impersonal things. You don't give your actual self. And there are plenty of ways to be intimate without love. I think lots of the time people say they love each other without realizing that they're merely intimate with the person, and don't love them.
Love combines the giving and the intimacy, and the deepest depths of both. That's why love is the truest and the most painful thing you can do.
But let's be honest. Our world, people in this time, we're all ridiculously terrified of pain and sickness and suffering. We're creatures of comfort, and instant gratification, and if we're not completely comfortable right now and always, we run to do whatever we can to fix ourselves until we're comfortable again. But nobody ever said that we should be comfortable all the time. Nobody has ever grown through comfort. If you ask anyone in this world to name a time when they grew the most, they will undoubtedly name a time when they suffered. And usually it was love's fault, a lack of love, a breaking off of love, unreciprocated love, but always love.
Lewis' use of words like motionless, airless, and impenetrable really get to me. He's so right. You can lock it all away, pretend you don't have a heart, and you won't hurt. It's true. But you won't grow. You won't live. Without love, without your heart doing what it was meant to do, it will be stagnant. And in the end, you'll be more unhappy. Not in pain. But discontented.
Humans were made to love. We wouldn't have a million blog-posts like this about it, and there would be no discussion of love, if we weren't supposed to love. We are supposed to love and break and hurt and grow and love again, because it's what we do best. We're resilient like that.
Mother Theresa told us to "love until it hurts" which I initially disagree with, when it's by itself. Don't love only until it hurts. Love past that. Love until it hurts and then love more, harder. That place past the hurt is where the second part of her quote comes in, the part I agree with because it changes the first part.
"I have found the paradox that, if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only love."
Love is always going to hurt. It's equal parts joy and pain, and that, in and of itself, is what makes it so special and true. If someone loves you past the pain, then it really is love.