Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Bound to Love

"In the case of women, they have a strange and strong loyalty. Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their loved ones through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women.. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin are almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head. A man's friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to change him, help him. Love is not blind, that is the last thing it is. Love is bound: and the more it is bound, the less it is blind."
--G.K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy"

Why is that? Where does our sense of undying loyalty come from? Is it helpful or harmful?
Love is beautiful. And to be bound to someone is something my heart longs for. But I find myself often unable to face the bad parts of love, to stand up against it. I am loyal, faithful, forgiving. I am bound to love. I am not blind to its flaws, but I am bound. Is that the way it should be?

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