The most misused word in the whole wide world – love!

Do we really understand what love means?

Love is everywhere: the airwaves (radio & TV music), cyberspace, magazines, books, and one-to-one encounters. It's simply everywhere.

I started hearing the 'love' phrase when I was an adolescent.
Scores of adolescent boys and girls could be seen skirting around the dark places at night probably to meet their 'dates' at their pre-arranged rendezvous. In my day, there were no mobile phones to ease communication. We just had to wait for our 'girls' and hope against all hope that they would turn up otherwise our 'dare devil' antics would just go to waste. Don't even mention all the priceless things we wasted in our quest to look macho.

We wasted our time, energy, good old virginity, and the chance to understand the dynamics of the most wonderful word in the world – love.

In retrospect, though, I am happy that I went through adolescence in those years. Today, everything is so different. The moral guard has been slackened far too much that most of the things that were considered no-brainers in my day are part of the normal lives of people nowadays.

The airwaves are 'rotten' – what with music that uphold immorality and the overuse of 'the love word' without meaning any bit of it.
Please don't mention the internet and its sisters. Appalling is the word to use here.

Recently I came across a story that, to me, seemed to leap from the page and shout aloud about the true meaning of love. I have reproduced it here for us to have a rethink about this word that we have taken for granted for a long, long time.

There was a young couple, Della and Jim, who were very much in love. Each had one unique possession. Della's hair was her glory. When she let it down it almost served her as her robe. Jim, on the other hand, had a gold watch which had come to him from his father and which was his pride.

It was the day before Christmas, and Della had exactly one dollar eighty seven cents to buy Jim a present. She did the only thing she could do. She went out and sold her hair for twenty dollars. And with the proceeds she bought a platinum fob for Jim's precious watch.

Jim came home at night, when he saw Della's shorn head he stopped as if stupefied. It was not that he did not like it or did not love her anymore. She was lovelier than ever. Slowly he handed her his gift. His gift was a set of expensive tortoise-shell combs and he had sold his gold watch to buy them for her.

Each had given the other all he or she had to give. Real love cannot think of any other way to give.

This, I think, is the true meaning of love: Giving your best for the benefit of another person without asking what you'll get out of it.