REAL LOVE

Real Love never parades itself outside in the streets, letting everyone know just how real it is. Real Love never needs an agent, a manager or a public relations guy. It doesn’t need an ad campaign or clever salesmen to move its product or drum up business. Real Love rarely sends out flyers to let everyone know it’s in the neighborhood. 

Real Love has talent, has a real gift, but it doesn’t orchestrate the camera angles to maximize its potential. And it never has to slip money into an unnoticed hand to get into a gig or sell itself out to slide in through the back door. Real Love is content to wait quietly outside talking to the stage hands.

Real Love never needs a dozen roses and a nice car for the first date, and it doesn’t start out with the lobster and chardonnay. Real Love won’t lie in the heat of the moment to have its way, and it never uses all the right words to get what it wants. Real Love usually takes things slowly and gets better with age. 

Real Love smiles even when it’s unfashionable to do so and never holds back tears. It looks good without makeup on and isn’t afraid to go out in public unprepared. Real Love quit rambling on about nothing a long time ago and doesn’t worry that it might not have anything to say right now. Real Love looks you in the eye during the awkward silences.

When it’s treated cruelly or quietly snubbed, Real Love never turns inward or burns spitefully. It never calls up mutual friends to vent in anger or stoops to pettiness to have its revenge.

Real Love is quietly hopeful and devastatingly kind. It’s always on time, and it doesn’t quit just because the shift is over. Real Love is surprising, like a night out under the stars. And though it usually prefers the softest touches, Real Love has strength enough to fend off all other suitors.

Real Love is not a gamble, a ruse or a phase. It’s not faddish or shallow, too young or too old. It’s cross-cultural and counter-cultural and sub-cultural. It doesn’t favor big bank accounts or the most beautiful faces, and it rarely comes around when it’s not called. Real Love likes the lowest voices and shows little respect for the big booming ones, though it doesn’t count them out just because they don’t get it right now. 

Real Love is a movement, an affection and an arrow pointing home; it is a peace, a precept and a personality. It knows about forever and ever, and it works just fine in the now and the here. And Real Love doesn’t need a clever tag line at the end to get its point across one last time. 

-Eric Hurtgen, via Relevant Magazine