Your First Love

Young at Heart: Your First Love

It’s funny in retrospect that thing I am going to write about happened last week because I was seriously questioning what my next post on my blog would be. This blog is something I want to continue to do, but I only want to write what I’m passionate about. So without further ado, let’s dive in.
 

To give you some context to the story, I am currently on a temp assignment at a warehouse where I’m responsible for filing invoices and their corresponding work orders. The environment of where I work is very casual. As a result, I was told it’s okay to listen to my iPod while I file (which is always a fun way to pass the time). Anyways, the other day at work I was jamming out to none other than Taylor Swift. Whether you like her or hate her as an artist, it does not relate to the story I want to tell. I happen to like her lyrics and her music.  

While I love music, I haven’t been listening to my iTunes lately. I used to have a lot of songs in my library but somehow when I converted everything to my iPhone, about 39 songs transferred over. So between that, my general laziness, and the fact that everything in iTunes is so darn expensive (I miss the days when every song was .99 cents) , I didn’t realize that a lot of things have changed. Seriously, it took me a few days to get used to this. 





Seriously, WHAT is with this layout?







And this?

But in spite of the changes, it wasn’t going top me from jamming out to “Sparks Fly” by Taylor Swift. And as I was listening, all of a sudden this message popped up:

And that’s when I froze, quite literally. First off, I obviously loved this song otherwise I wouldn’t have bought it so why was iTunes wanting me to categorize my songs even further? Secondly, how fitting that this message would flash across this particular song. It was the anthem of my relationship with a boy I fell in love with in college. Whenever I heard it, I would smile and feel all warm and fuzzy. Yes!  I would think, Taylor gets it!

 

But all relationships end in death, divorce or breakup. Thankfully for us, it was the latter. Even so, I was devastated. The sparks didn’t fly anymore; I couldn’t listen to Taylor Swift for almost three months (not even her breakup anthems) because every song would somehow remind me of him. It took a little while, but eventually I was able to incorporate her music back into my song rotation.

Now, you’re probably wondering if this boy was my first love. Yes...and no. I believe that love comes in so many different shapes and forms. And with so many different forms of love, there’s so many “first loves” you can have. I fell in love with my parents when they held me in their arms for the first time. I first fell in love with Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” before I could even speak (and when I finally could, you can bet I was belting “Part of Your World” at the top of my lungs and singing “Ahhhhhhhhh” as I swam in the pool). I had an insatiable love for reading books to the point where they needed to be taken away as punishment. I fell in love with the back roads of northern Massachusetts that I can still navigate to this day even though I haven’t lived there in over a decade. I could go on about all the things I love (and have loved) in my twenty-four years of existence on this earth. But who has time for that?

People have tried their hardest to categorize love since the beginning of time. You hear songs asking questions like “What is love?” and making statements like “Love is a battlefield”. Whenever a character confesses their love for another character, it’s always such a pivotal moment in the story (sometimes it’s even viewed as a negative thing depending on the context in which its said). As a result, we as a human race have put the concept of love on this pedestal, meant to be idolized and manipulated in whatever way we see fit. But when it boils down to it, love is not as complicated as people make it out to be. In the Bible, love is described in the following way:  

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking. it is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrongs. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away” 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Love, in a nutshell, is something that you just do. Love isn’t something that needs to be bragged about with a #mcm or a #wcw. Love is not something that you try to use as a way to serve yourself and your needs. Love is unconditional, true, and never failing.

So don’t let your first love be your last love. Don’t try to complicate love. And, above all else, share your love.