Delilah - Love Matters

Why does love matter? I think its really all that does. Everything else that matters, matters because of love. If a fire burns, it matters because someone or something we love might be hurt, even destroyed. If a birthday is celebrated, the celebration matters only if we are surrounded by those that we love. If a life is mourned, it is not mourned for what was accomplished nearly so much as for the love that will be missed.

If you listen to my nightly radio show, you know I refer to myself as the Queen of Sappy Love Songs, so it seems natural that I would believe love matters, but what do I mean by love? Any attempt at definingor maybe a better word is describingwhat I think love is will fall short, but a feeble attempt is important as we indulge our hearts in a multitude of stories of love that matters.

A lot of people think love is an emotionthat uplifting feeling we carry in the core of our bodies when we are rushing headlong into a new relationship. When I was a teenager, and again as a young woman, I thought that each time I felt that surge of joy and energy in my chest (and other places farther south), I was experiencing Love. It got to be such a joke with my girlfriends that my childhood pal Dee Dee had a T-shirt printed up with the message Its for real this time, because each time I felt I was in love, I would declare with all the sincerity a seventeen-year-old girl can muster, Really, this is the real thing, it is love this time. I still think the intoxicating high of romance, the dizzying experience of having your senses overwhelmed while falling in love, can be part of real love, but just a tiny part.

Some of the bead-wearing hippies I used to hang out with back in the day in Eugene, Oregon, explained to me that love was a force, an energy field that surrounds us with light. They told me that I could meditate, dance or chant to create more of this positive love energy swirling and flowing all around me. It seems to me that love is created by building relationships rather than by waving your hands over your head in a snakelike motion, the way my friends in tie-dyed shirts encouraged me to do as they listened to the music of Bob Marley and partook of herbal enlightenment. Still, I believe in the positive energy of love, which empowers and inspires all who love and are loved.

The more years I spend on this planet, the more I realize how very little I know about anything, and that includes relationships. I find it ironic that I host a radio show focused on relationships and love songs when Ive been divorced three times and even now dont have all the answers to how to make relationships work and endure. Still, I feel Ive learned a lot about love over the years, both from my own life experiences and from the touching love stories listeners confide in me when they phone in to my radio show every night or when they e-mail me.

One of the amazing things I have discovered these past few years, as I rethink all my previous beliefs and attitudes about relationships, is what a cruel disservice we do to young people when we impose on them rules of relationships that were once handed down to us. Among the rules I have had to unlearn is the belief that you can only love one person in your life. Or if you love one person and that relationship comes undone, you cant love another until you stop loving Person A. Or if you love Person B, then you certainly cant still be in love with Person A. Especially if Person A is a jerk or has abused your heart in any way. It may not seem reasonable to go on loving a person who is deficient in kindness or compassion or other admirable qualities, but as the philosopher Pascal famously said, The heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of.

I think the reason my radio show has enjoyed such popularity is that when my listeners call in to request a song or share a dedication, they trust me with their heart. They let me know a bit about their situation, their dreams or their lovers. Despite the public forum, people feel safe allowing me to peek into the windows of their heart each and every night. Its a phenomenon that I dont understand and havent seen with any of my radio host peers, but after just a four-or five-minute conversation with me, a complete stranger, listeners often share thoughts, feelings, secrets that they havent felt comfortable sharing with those closest to them. Maybe the level of anonymity, given that I am merely a disconnected voice on the radio and they are calling from the privacy of their own home, without a face or a last name and perhaps even with a made-up first name, gives them the freedom to be transparent. The level of intimacy people feel toward me and my staff is a gift and an honor that I thank God for every day.