4 Recipes for Good Living — From the Editor

Letter from the editor

Love's Worth

The highest level of understanding love is to know its value!

My daughter and I had an interesting conversation a few years ago when she asked how to determine if and when a person really loves you. I thought about it for a moment, relating it to my own personal experiences. I considered the things we typically do to demonstrate our love toward another person and had quite a challenge sifting through what does and does not matter in a love relationship. The most common expressions of love are gifts and simply saying I love you. The thing about a gift is, something that can be bought is not a true measure of love. This becomes even more poignant when you understand that your love for a person is present even in the absence of presents. Gifts, although they can be enjoyed in the moment, can never fully capture the worth of a human being.

Words on the other hand, though powerful, are of no value in the absence of a spirit of selflessness as part of the expression of love towards the other person. When we value someone, it becomes all about them and less about ourselves. Human beings are, of course, human, and it is our nature to want to get before we give and so our actions very often reflect what we never intended.

After years of trying to understand this concept of what it really means to love another human being, it took me to the most banal or common experience one could ever have when trying to understand the meaning of love for another human being. I remembered the overwhelming ache in my heart when first laying eyes on my son and daughter and feeling as though something had taken total and complete control of the space that once housed my heart. This love was unfiltered and unconditional in its purest sense. I loved these beautiful creatures not because something had been given or expressed by them to me, but because they were and are the ultimate expression of love between my husband and myself. This does not mean however, that the only road to understanding love is through the experience of giving birth to children. The ability to love is something that is innate to every person and it is through unfortunate experiences or lack thereof that interferes with the process of developing the ability to experience and understand this powerful gift that is, at birth, imparted to us all. What I know about love is this.

Love’s worth is:

And remember, if everyone values and gives to the other person, no one will ever feel as though they are without value, nor will they ever be in need of any good thing. How good is that...

Deigratia,

Bonnie