The story What We Talk about When We Talk about Love by Raymond Carver, is obviously about love. It’s about really getting down to “nitty gritty” of what “true love” is. Let me paint the picture for you. Two couples are sitting around at a kitchen table sipping on gin. All four of them are pretty much debating what they feel true love is. As do most debaters, they all had different opinions and arguments to go along with their persuasion. The sides that each character take, are all well worth the argument; but which one is right? Referring back to an earlier blog posting of mine; Love is an amazing thing. So many times people throw the word love, or the phrase I love you around. Love is not meant for that; love is a very powerful word that goes much deeper then just saying it.

Terri, one of the characters in the story thinks that her ex-husband displayed “true love”. He went on a rampage one night and tried to kill Terri, but ultimately wound up killing himself. Now I don’t know about you but I find it very hard to find the “true love” in that circumstance; maybe obsessed or insane, but not love. Terri’s current husband Mel had a story as well. He had a much different approach to what true love is. He told a story of an older couple who had gotten into a horrible car wreck and almost lost their lives. Many hours of surgery later, both of them pulled through and were expected to recover just fine. For the time being though, both were covered from head to toe with bandages, and weren’t able to move their extremities. Now heres the crazy part; although they were both expected to survive the older man was still very depressed. When Mel asked him why he was depressed, the old man told him, because he couldn’t turn his head and look at his beautiful bride. Now that’s love! That man loved his wife, even though she was laid up in a hospital bed not really looking so beautiful according to the world’s standards. Love is a crazy thing, and sometimes it makes people do crazy things. But I think true love is simple, yet so deep.

I think true love is, no matter what, no matter what the circumstance, you love that person as if everything was perfect. True love is, when everyone else turns their back on them, you are there with open arms. It’s almost impossible to describe, because love can be on so many levels. You can say “I love my dog”, but who is really going to die for their dog. You can say “I love pizza” but would you want pizza laying in the hospital bed next to you, while you’re fighting for your life. Do you see what I’m getting at here? There is only one kind of true love though. To me, that’s loving someone so much that you are willing to die for them; you are willing to go to the ends of the earth for them. Jesus Christ is the perfect example. To me beyond the shadow of any doubt, the most amazing, PERFECT display of true love. Now I’m not writing this to preach to you, but to me, not only was Jesus dieing on the cross for our sins, but he was showing us what TRUE LOVE is. I’m not trying to say that dieing for someone is the only way you can really tell if it was true love. But what I’m trying to say is that it’s the actions more then the words.
I found this quote that I really thought summed true love up very well, it’s by Honore de Balzac, “True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.” That old man wanted to see his beautiful wife, regardless of what she looked like. Even though he was bruised and broken himself. At that point he was putting him self aside and his true love in front. It speaks volumes to people when you put their needs a head of yours. I keep thinking of my father, and the countless times he bought clothes or something for my brothers, sister and myself, when he needed something himself. Or how my mom took care of me when I was sick and highly contagious and no one else wanted to be near me. She was their though, taking care of me. Hollywood does an amazing job sometimes at giving us a horrible perception of what true love is

I feel that my interpretation of this story matters, to me as well as whoever is ready this. I think that our minds are skewed sometimes as to what true love really is; but in all actuality true love is simple I hope and pray that you take as much out of this story as I did. We all want to find true love, and we all want to be truly loved. I can personally say that when someone else puts me before their own needs, it makes me feel loved. Just know that true love is not just something you say or write, but its something displayed in the good times, and the bad times, in sickness and in health. True Love never fails.