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See, the thing is, it doesn't say that love avoids situations which will aggravate or irritate or try love's patience. It says love is patient.

It doesn't say that love is nice when love can afford to be and caring when it's easy to be and helpful when it wants to be. It says that love is kind.

It doesn't say that love denies the good things about love so as to not sound boastful or that love detaches from the situation so as to not become envious or that love decides to be self-sufficient so as to never be in a position when resentment or irritability will arise.

Love does not endure all things because love has been kept safely away behind bulletproof glass. Love cannot bear all things if love is not around to receive things.

What I mean to say, I guess, is that when I reasoned like a child, I tried to be perfect, so I put myself in situations where perfection was more or less achievable. In speech, in knowledge, in self-sacrifice, in all the things I can work on by myself. I thought, maybe, and maybe still think sometimes, that love was attention and that you got attention by doing these good, achievable things and that in order to be loved, you needed to put yourself in the position to do good things and to remove yourself from situations in which you would not be able to do good things.

What a tiny view of love.

And I don't understand love, not really, not truly, and I don't love, not really, not truly, but I do see it, dimly, sometimes. I do see the outline, the shape of love, enough to know that it is this enormous thing and that it is not a distant thing. Love is present. Love is here. Love endures. Love remains. Love stays.

What a frightening thing we try to be.