Theologians at my school never get tired in telling us the real meaning of falling in love, loving and choosing to love. They often tell us this in our school paper, in our Theo131 classes, in the books they write and they always add that loving as how Jerry Maguire said it - "You complete me" - is bullshit (although I love Cameron Crowe's films). They stress that love is when Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets said "You make me want to be a better man."
We have this twisted notion that love is all castles and princes on horses. Love is unselfish. Love is great when you know what it really is. Love, in Father Dacanay's words, is the willingness to extend one's self for your own growth, for the growth of your loved one - for yourselves and for other people. I don't know how long they have been using Scott Peck as a medium for teaching what love is but it sure stuck in the minds and hearts of Ateneans, well at least for me it did...
From Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled
“Love can be defined as the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”
“Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.”
“A good marriage can exist only between two strong and independent people.”
“If you expect another person to make you happy, you’ll be endlessly disappointed.”
“Genuine love, with all the discipline that it requires, is the only path in this life to substantial joy.”
“The genuine lover always respects and even encourages the separateness and the unique individuality of the beloved.”
“Attention is an act of will, of work against the inertia of our own minds.”
“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.”
“True listening, total concentration on the other is always a manifestation of love.”
“We can love only that which in one way or another has importance for us.”
“A full life will be full of pain. But the only alternative is not to live fully or not to live at all.”
