The Undercurrent

I found this on a blog (http://laurenmhughes.com/) and liked it:

"Sometimes life – the situations you find yourself in, the people you find yourself around – makes it easy to forget that love is real. I think sometimes the things we forget the most easily are the things we’ve always known – the things we take for granted. Love is definitely one of those things.

Love is in the details. It’s the undercurrent to everything, sometimes it feels like it’s not there – but it is. It’s always there. Love is in forgiveness and fidelity. It’s in patience and perseverance. It’s in (constructive) criticism and compassion. It’s in honesty. It’s in the here and now. It’s certainly in the hereafter.

Love is that swelling in your chest when you walk outside and the sky is blue and the temperature is a perfect seventy-two and the wind blows across your face and your favorite song comes on your iPod and you think, YES. THIS IS IT. Love is when you wake up at seven in the morning when you don’t have to be up until ten to drive someone wherever they need to go. Love is answering a late night phone call long after you’ve gotten under the covers. Love is in the letters – the three page letters that you write because you just can’t seem to say the right things out loud. Love is in the listening – really listening - to all the stupid jokes, outrageous opinions, senseless rants, and random facts. Love is in the reading  – really reading - all the texts, emails, academic papers, and amateur book manuscripts. Love is in the talking – really talking - about ideas, opinions, wants, needs, and insecurities. Love, once it takes hold, is in the everything – the eyes, the lips, the touch – and it’s hard to disguise. It’s not easily suppressed. It doesn’t go away.

Because it is the undercurrent, love is everywhere. Even in the dark. A lot of people say that it isn’t – that love can only exist in the light – but they’re wrong. Love can be found in the darkest of places, too. You just have to look for it and, more often than not, it’s right there in front of you. Sometimes you realize it just in time, sometimes you don’t. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there all along – waiting to be acknowledged, waiting to be appreciated, waiting to be embraced. It doesn’t mean that love doesn’t exist.

Love is real. The realest thing in the entire world. In the light, in the dark. It always exists. But only when you let it – and, the thing is, you have to let it. It’s the only way to really live."