We spend our entire lives studying in efforts to ensure success.
As young children, we study and learn the alphabet so we can communicate our needs and desires. As slightly older children, we spend 12 years of our lives in public and private systems to study and learn subjects, skills, and statistics that will help us in our futures. As young adults, we study and learn to pursue specific careers. As adults, we study and learn to stay in those careers. As spiritual seekers, we study and learn from a variety of texts and teachers to be the best human we can be. And as parents, we study and learn in order to not fail our children.
No matter what we pursue in life, we know that studying will lead to success.
So why then, when it comes to the hardest subject in the the world—love—do we feel as though we can just wing it? Why do we believe that we are well-equipped to handle relationships (marital, familial, platonic, etc.) just because we’re alive? Is it brain chemicals? movies? simply because no one talks about how hard it is? because no one knows how easy that hardness should be?
Yes, relationships are work. True love requires the abandonment of the ego, honest and loving communication, trust, loyalty, second chances, and a delicate balance of our fullest dedication to another human being and honoring our independent minds and free, wild hearts. It requires a bit of universe magic and a whole lot of maturity.
And when you think about the average teenager starting their mating process when their brains aren’t even fully fused together yet, you begin to wonder why we don’t teach a course about love alongside sex ed.
We have written about love for years, conducted science experiments to determine its roots and our own personal experiments of trial and error, and in light of all that, still don’t consider it a subject that warrants proper studying.
I am changing that. Well, for me at least.
Starting now—let’s be real, sometime in the near future—I am going to become a student of love and if I’m lucky, emerge a loveologist. I will read articles, books, conduct an interview or two, geek out over books and wine with friends in a loveology study group, and apply what I’ve learned in efforts to be a better coworker, sister, friend, aunt, and daughter. And in the future once again, girlfriend, then wife, then mother.
I’m going to promise to share my findings for two reasons: 1) writing is how I grow 2) my blog has been barren for far too long.
I am excited for this journey. Because everyone wants love. And if we give out a little more everywhere we go, everyone lights up.
My Life is Greige 