WAIT FOR LOVE

Most people want to love and be loved. The problem is, most of us don't love and aren't loved.
Instead, we think we love and we hope we are loved. But what we really do is substitute other things -- security, peace, praise, power, sex, control -- for love, both in what we give and in what we receive.
Now part of the problem is that most of us, like it or not, want love so badly that we accept these substitutes rather than wait another day for love. We really want to love and be loved, but we aren't sure we know how to love and are even more unsure we'd know love if it walked up to us and gave us a kiss.
So we accept far less than we deserve. We accept far less than love.
Now granted, many of these errors are made out of need, out of exuberance but mostly out of fear and uncertainty -- fear that no one will ever love us, so we take what we can get even when it is far less than love; and uncertainty about whether what we are experiencing is love.
Now I'd love to tell you how to know if you are in love and are being loved, to give you a list of things to check off to make sure it is what you are looking for, but what everyone always says about love is so very true -- you'll just know. So maybe that is the key. If you don't really know that what you have and what you receive is love, then maybe you should step back and reconsider everything.
Because love is worth it. It is worth the wait, it is worth the searching, it is worth the time, it is worth the ache, the emptiness, the longing, the dreaming, the hoping, the desiring.
So don't dive into a mistake, an error, that will only wind up leaving two people hurting, empty, longing and, well, confused. Find love, give love and then go on with life together.
Because that is what we all want, even if we sometimes mistake it for something else entirely.