There was a time someone asked me what kind of relationship I wanted to have.
Is it the kind where I’m the one who is loved more? Or is it where I love the other person more?
During that time, I thought that a relationship where I’m loved more is better. Isn’t it good to be showered with affection? Isn’t it good to be the one thought and cared about?
Later, however, I had this realization. If asked again, I’d say that it is better to be the one who truly loves.
Why?
Because when you are loved, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are happy, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that your life becomes meaningful.
How many people who are loved are still miserable? How many people who are loved fail to value the love being given to them?
When you are loved, you can reject the love being given to you. You can remain alone and sad, never allowing love to warm your heart.
Aren’t we all loved by God? Then why aren’t we always satisfied?
It’s not that the love of God is insufficient. It’s because being loved is not enough. If being loved were enough, God wouldn’t have had to command us these two things: to love God above all, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
We need to love. It’s the only way that we can be whole and happy. It’s what could give meaning and purpose to our lives.
It is true that God loved us first, but we have to allow that love to enter our being, to change us and empower us so that we could love in return.
Only by loving can we be fully human. Only by loving could we ever be like God.
St. Francis of Assisi once prayed:
O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.
Following is a poem I have recently composed about loving and being loved:
Is It Better To Love Or To Be Loved?
It's not the one who is loved
Who's got everything,
It's not the one who is
Showered with gifts,
The one thought about,
The one whose life
Is cared for
And saved.
But the one who is happy
Is the one who cares,
The one who gives
The one who knows
What it means
To go out of oneself
And live
In the heart of another.
It is the lover who sees,
And the lover who feels,
It is the lover who discovers
That save for love
There is no life
And save for love
There is no meaning
To everything else.
We are most happy
When we love,
We are most ourselves
When we think about another.
And though at times
Love may hurt
And love may not
Be returned,
It is better still
To love
Than not to love.
Those who are loved
May not want it,
May not feel it,
May not allow it
To enter their very being
To be changed.
But those who love,
Those who truly love
Have already been changed,
Have already seen
Beauty,
Eternity,
And goodness
That never fades.
When Being Loved Is Not Enough