Love is Everything – Not Anything

By: Kenneth Stepp

Strange title, but I will unpack it and make it easier to understand. Love is my favorite topic. It is the most important topic on the planet. Yet the most misunderstood. Why? Because we have diluted and rearranged it’s meaning to fit into a friendship or romantic situation. Love has become an idea rather than what it was meant to be. Love is radical. The word love is not. It’s simply letters placed together to describe something it isn’t. Thus, the dilution, change of meaning, and frivolous use. I find nothing sadder. Nothing as important either.

“I love you”….. Three world that if understood before spoke are life changing. Very few have a clue what the mean. I have been blessed to love two, non blood relative humans. I know that until the second one. I had no idea what those three words mean. Heck. I’ve used them to describe friendships, romantic connections. Yesterday I even said I love food. In my defense. It was a bacon cheeseburger with a fried egg on it with onion rings. What’s not to love? I would not lay my life down for that plate of food. I did lay down about $8.00. I consider me more valuable than that. I’ve told people I loved them and can’t remember their name ten years later. That was faux love. Not real. I enjoyed the cheeseburger more than some of them. How callous am I?

My readers tell me they like my honesty. What they don’t know is that my honesty is new. Up until six months or so. Until I finally became repulsed living my own version of a cheap sitcom based on lies. That’s all I had. The funny thing is. I thought no one would read the real me. An old friend who passed on a couple of years ago had a saying. Numbers don’t lie. People do. My readership jumped when I exposed me for who I was. A flawed, confused, somewhat unavailable tortured soul. Turns out truth has an audience.

My love journey began because I was hurt. I wanted to understand love. Not faux love. Real love. I wish there was another word we could give faux love so that I wouldn’t need to write, real love. I could just say, “love”. And everyone would know what I was talking about. Let me explain. The most common love issue when interviewing women is lies. Second only to trust or faithfulness. Great topics. But, they have nothing to do with real love. They do in fact control actions behind faux love. Hey, this might be easier to explain than I thought. “I loved him but”. This is the quickest way to know real love wasn’t there. And, the one saying it has no clue what real love is. Most never experience it. Some have, yet didn’t recognize it as the 7th wonder of the world that it is.

“My husband was unfaithful”. The next sentence is always the same. “So I left him”. That wasn’t love. The two girls I have loved in my life could do anything and never lost me. Providing they loved me back. That is the game changer. Two people who love one another unconditionally make it work. Treat one another with respect, they adore one another. They are less important than their partner. When one does and one doesn’t. Well. This has been my journey. It has only been recently that things truly have changed. We create others in the image of our myths. The stronger the myth, the more unrealistic the image. A little lie will do it. I use that because it’s what did it for me. From superhuman to something far less. Something that becomes uglier each day really.

Real love has no conditions. It is limitless. But, it must be two way to work. Sadly, what happens is someone gets hurt, changed, and eventually damaged. It takes me so long to process data these days. I’ve been nicknamed, The Thinker by my friends. There are times I wish I could simply be the naive guy I use to be. Remember when you believed everything people told you? Unknowing things have become a goal for me. I know this. When two people have real love. They make it work. Most don’t. Maybe almost none do. Treasure it, guard it, and nurture it if you are lucky enough to find it. Good luck with yours.

www.stepplife.com

Founder, American Angel Works