The first time I experienced love but wasn’t sure was the love of my mother. I was probably between 6 or 8 the first time I remembered doing something for her that made me feel good, and from that point on I made it a habit to do anything I could to keep that feeling coming.

Then one day at school I met Brenda Randall, the prettiest girl I had ever experienced up to that point (8 years old). I remembered sitting next to her in class, offering her parts of my lunch and then one evening calling her on the phone and playing Tom Jones’ Pussy Cat Pussy Cat from my little 45 record player into the phone, she responded back with Aretha Franklin Rescue Me! I even took Brenda on a date one early evening to Woody’s a local hamburger joint across the street from Willard Jr. High in Berkeley, California. But soon Brenda fell out of love with me and took up with Kevin Green, the school bully. I had never felt such pain and wondered where it came from and how long it would last, but I never got any answers, as soon as it came it was gone and I hadn’t even realized it.

All the other emotional feelings we experience seems to come with a cap on the time it takes to dissipate after it has been launched. If you get angry it doesn’t leave an after taste, but it may have left some scars depending on the way you dealt with the anger. Even sadness can coexist with an individual as a partial ally. Fear has its levels of intensity, but it soon subsides back into its hiding place until another episode arises, but love comes with no such release button, it must be allowed to run its course and die in its own time so that you can again seek that wonderful feeling called love.

There are no guarantees that love will live in eternal bliss. Each time we find someone to love or fall in love with we do so with the absence of “Relationship Insurance.” Most great accomplishments begin as a risk, and with the size of the risk comes the size of the reward. I’ve never quite figured out why we are always seeking love, or why love has to be the solidifying agent in a relationship. Perhaps it’s the high that comes with love that we seek so much. And if both people in a relationship enter with the knowledge that there is a possibility love may soon end and become a pain, is that a risk worth taking, I think so? With anything in life, there is no certainty, there will always be inconsistencies, but there is one thing for sure whether love is intimate, platonic, or familial and that is, Love is good.