Love, a Lifelong Journey

 

Ramblings of a Retired Mind

Love, a Lifelong Journey

Love—that elusive emotion every human longs for. For most of us, it begins with the love of a parent. Yet not all parents set the stage for a child’s future search for love.

Love wears many forms, but perhaps the purest is the unconditional devotion of a mother to her newborn child. It’s a force of nature—indescribable and undeniable.

A Mother’s Love

I never doubted my mother’s love. From the moment I arrived in her arms, she embraced me with a gift I would spend my whole life trying to return. Only when I became a parent myself did I truly understand: a mother’s love asks for nothing in return—it simply is.

Childhood Lessons

As children, we cling to family love, the only love we know. But once we step into the larger world, we begin an endless quest to fill the void left by that primal bond. We seek friends, connections, even attention, all in search of belonging.

In grade school, I had a few close buddies. We played, teased, and laughed together. Then one day at recess, a girl named Anita kissed me on the cheek before running away.

“Anita loves Bobby!” the playground cried.

Confused, I confronted her. She tackled me to the ground, and to the cheers of our classmates, kissed me again—this time on the lips. From that day forward, Anita declared I was her boyfriend.

To me, it felt less like love and more like stalking. I spent the rest of the school year dodging her and her relentless teasing.

A Summer Education

Thankfully, summer brought escape. My parents sent me to an overnight boys’ camp, where I discovered a different kind of “education.” Late at night, the older boys would paddle stolen canoes across the lake to visit the girls’ camp.

That summer taught me more about “love” than I had ever known—though in truth, it was something far less noble.

A New Beginning

By fall, my family moved from Chicago to Stamford, Connecticut. Anita was behind me, and I had a clean slate.

On my very first day at my new school, I sat beside the most beautiful girl I had ever seen—Rebecca Stern. With her long curly hair and deep hazel eyes, she stirred something inside me I couldn’t explain.

I had just turned thirteen, newly “a man” in the eyes of my faith, and I wondered: Was this love?

My friends told me Rebecca was out of my league. Years later, I would learn that many others thought the same. Perhaps that belief left her unmarried.

Lust vs. Love

It took me years to separate lust from love. Lust is desire—the urge to have, to possess. Love, by contrast, is calm and steady. It comforts and warms rather than consumes.

Through my teen years, lust was often the louder voice. I chased girl after girl, only to run headlong into rejection.

I still remember sophomore year. I asked a girl named Linda to the prom. She said yes, and for a week I floated on hope—until I found her kissing another boy in the quad.

Anger got the better of me. “I guess this means we’re not going to the prom,” I snapped. She shrugged, and that was that.

I went alone, humiliated but too proud to admit it.

Decades later, at our 25th reunion, I saw Linda again. I ignored her, as if my cold shoulder could erase an old wound. Truth be told, she probably never even remembered the moment that had branded itself so deeply in me.

Finding True Love

That cycle of lust, rejection, and hurt followed me through my youth. Over time, I realized lust was an emotion I could live without.

Once I let it go, I was finally free to pursue real love—the kind I had first known through my mother. And eventually, I found it again in the woman I would marry.

With her, I discovered the same warmth, devotion, and constancy my mother had once given me. Together we built a family, and I finally understood:

The truest love is not found in possession—it is found in giving.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.