English
EspañolTruly loving each other creates its own space and time. Moreover, it positions the other spaces and times, with their things, in their “place”: in their proper order of importance.
Text
“Love needs time and space; everything else is secondary.” (The Joy of Love, n.224)
Commentary
Love needs its own space and time in order to be realized. How can it exist if we do not give it a chance? Something so fundamental, yet we forget it with surprising frequency. We want to love and be loved, but we direct all our time and attention to other things. The result is clear: love is gone, for we gave it neither time nor its place.
Love has to do with choosing. How pleasant it is to feel when we are chosen as someone else´s favorite person, who they most prefer above any other thing or occupation. It can be something as simple, for example, as setting aside cell phones and social networks when we are with our spouse and children. Even more so, if there is a danger of work or other friendships and distractions “sneaking” into the home´s intimacy. To be loved is to be chosen, to be preferred, over a telephone call or a message notification.
Within a family, each love – that of spouses, parents and children, siblings, grandparents, and grandchildren – asks to be truly realized, to be lived; it requests its own space and time. Because I love you and, in order to love you, I choose you over the rest. I prefer to keep talking with you, sharing our things, keeping each other company and exchanging confidences, giving you my undivided attention, not letting anything take my focus away from you.
