PERFECTION asks: I read something today, saying “Love is easy when it is with the right person.” Is it always like that? What about crossing oceans just to be with someone you love? Do some things just have to be won over in order to be yours?
Hi PERFECTION –
Well you KNOW what I’m going to say about that! For us dogs, love is always easy, unless it’s really the very wrong person (say, someone who beats us or starves us). So when we meet that little girl, or that older man with no legs, or that active argumentative family… love is SOOOO easy for us. And I’ve never stopped loving Handsome, and he never has me. It’s so easy, we don’t know how not to!
But that doesn’t mean that our relationship has always been easy. The first year or two we had together, he put a lot of effort into training me. I was a miserable pain to live with (always biting at him and chewing his things up), and he kept making me feel unloved by telling me to do things different from what I was doing. And there have been times when he’s gotten depressed or focused on other things, and that’s been very tough for me. And then of course there have been the times when I required more work and attention, like if I got injured or deeply ill, and he found himself devoting everything in his life to taking care of me. I might be easy to love, but loving me then made his life enormously difficult.
The way I like to look at it, love isn’t a part of life – love is the reason we live. Whatever our passions are. If you’re starving, it’s your love of food and living that keeps you going. If you’re more comfortable, it might be your love of your work, or a cause, or your faith, or… yes… somebody… that you live for.
So if you love someone and they don’t love you back, is it easy to “cross oceans” to get to them? Nope. But you’re finding it very easy to love them so much that you would cross those oceans.
And if you find the right person, is it easy for them to love you back? Well maybe sometimes. But I’ll bet you’ve seen a thousand movies with a romance where at least one of them isn’t interested in the other. They’re saying that sometimes it can be a lot of work to find what’s eventually easy!
My friend, love is the easiest thing in the world, and it’s the hardest. But most importantly, it is all about the souls involved. No other love is exactly like what I share with Handsome, or like what you feel for that woman you’ve written me about. But love is great.
So my real answer to your question is that love isn’t easy, but with the right person (or pooch), it’s so worth it you won’t even mind the work!
All my best,
Shirelle