So often, we spend most of our time taking care of our physical needs. We make sure our bodies are fed, cleaned, clothed, exercised and rested. We also make sure intellectual stimulation and entertainment is a priority. Yet, we also overlook the most important need — love.
Of course, as a society, love is not overlooked. Popular media constantly places great emphasis on what we need to do and how we should look to attract “love”. But being loved is not as powerful an emotional need as that desire to love someone else.
The need to love and care for others is built into us biologically. This need is what allows parents to forgo sleep, food, and sanity while raising their children. This need is what allows people to put themselves at risk to save others from natural disasters and human threats. This need is what makes human society work on both a small and a large scale.
Loving others allows us to put the needs and desires of others before our own. We will work harder and longer, sometimes at jobs we loathe, to provide for those we love. We will tolerate otherwise intolerable conditions to provide care for our loved ones, whether they are young or old.
Love means to cherish, hold dear, and treasure. We do not hurt, harm, or cause pain to those we love; rather, we seek to relieve their suffering. It is not about wanting people; it’s about wanting people to be happy. It’s not about wanting to possess or control others; it’s about wanting to set them free.
John Oxen ham described love this way: “Love ever gives. Forgives, outlives. And ever stands with open hands. And while it lives, it gives. For this are love’s prerogatives – to give, and give, and give.”
Love is the grease that allows the wheel of life to continue turning. For when we love, we look beyond ourselves, beyond our needs and desires. We sacrifice our time, our energy, our wishes, and sometimes even ourselves because of love. Sometimes it is for an immediate person or group that we know intimately and love completely, but other times it is for a larger group of people that we don’t really know or perhaps even like. It is love that allows law enforcement and emergency services personnel to face danger. It is love that allows soldiers to risk everything. Love makes heroes every day in every corner of the world. As Thomas
Loving others allows us to put the needs and desires of others before our own. We will work harder and longer, sometimes at jobs we loathe, to provide for those we love. We will tolerate otherwise intolerable conditions to provide care for our loved ones, whether they are young or old.
Most people, when they think of a person search, think about a formal search that is conducted for legal reasons or when you hire an investigator to find someone who is lost. My use of the term person search is far more informal. In fact, I use it simply as my own method of reconnecting with the people in my life, and I invite any other wanderers to use it in the same way.
The point is simple. I value relationships. I value the people who have become part of my story and who have been a significant player in my story for a short or long period of time. I value more than the memory of them, however. I value them enough that I desire to remain in contact and to keep in touch come, what may, in life. This is what fueled my desire to start a person search to find each person that I missed.
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