Broken hearts, empty promises, nostalgic feelings, and the longing to love and be loved again. These are some of the now common phases of life that we go through. It seems normal to go through courtship, to have an ‘In a Relationship’ or ‘It’s Complicated’ status in Facebook. Sadly, it also seems normal to have your heart broken and charge it to experience. Don’t get trapped in the rat race of love, courtship and relationships.
Note: It’s been a long while since I wrote about love and courtships. God has impressed this entry in my heart. I know that a lot of young men and women out there are in the rat race of love. This is for you – may God touch your hearts and give you wisdom through this entry.
The Unseen Marathon
If you don’t already know, the term ‘Rat Race’ is “an endless, self-defeating, or pointless pursuit. It conjures up the image of the futile efforts of a lab rat trying to escape while running around a maze or in a wheel.” (Wikipedia)
Our generation is a generation of feelings, a generation of brokenness, of pride. It is a generation that is filled with love – love stories, love movies, love songs.
Love, love, love.
Love that seems so real and tangible in our emotions as we watch the most popular chick flick. Love that tugs so strongly against our hearts as someone sings us the sweetest, trending love song.
Love that feels so absent and surreal at home with your family.
Love that doesn’t exist with the parent who left you.
Love that flew away and left you with a broken home. An unhappy husband or wife who’s threatening to leave. A forlorn, rebellious teenager who seems impossible to reach out to.
A broken heart.
The Unreachable Cheese
We don’t seem to have that kind of love. The love that is the stuff of love stories. The building blocks of romantic movies. The fairytale kind.
We seem to have missed it. How could we? Perhaps it exists somewhere out there. You just have to look hard enough. So with hopes held high, you march out telling yourself someday you’ll find your cheese – the ‘perfect one’.
Going through the Maze
And so begins the start of your experiment. Going through life engaging in relationships left and right. Trying to find out who suits you best.
“Ooh this girl looks cute!” Then you date a while and find out that she’s too clingy.
Nah.
Next!
We go through life rummaging through people – trying to find the perfect ‘cheese’ to our taste. We fill that longing of love with the temporary highs of the people we come into a relationship with. And then when we realize that the cheese doesn’t taste as well as we would like it to, we break up.
We give away a part of ourselves to that temporary cheese. Something we can never get back again. Some of those are spoken words. Promises. Memories. Purity. Things that are precious to us.
We are trapped in a maze going through this rat race of love, courtship and relationships because we are looking for the perfect cheese.
After years and years of the same thing and we’ve tired ourselves out – suddenly we find out the saddest thing.
There is no cheese.
Detour
There is no cheese in the maze. It’s somewhere else. That’s why we have to get out of the maze! That’s why we have to escape the rat race! How exactly do we escape?
We stop pursuing the cheese.
Muscle up
Going on dates, getting home late at night after a movie, talking on the phone for three hours, spending money for a dinner date at the best hotel in town, and the list goes on. These are some of the things that will take your time, effort, and finances away. And if you keep doing these things from relationship to relationship, you don’t realize it but you’re already constantly running in the rat race of love.
Running after a non-existent cheese.
You just won’t have any time to muscle up.
Being in a maze as it is, there is always a way out. But you have to muscle up. You have to develop yourself. Give yourself a boost! Work on your:
- Financial Stability
- Spiritual Walk
- Pursuit of Wisdom
- Emotional Control
- Physical Discipline
(To know more about these, check out the Five Things I tell singles who asks “Am I ready for a relationship?”)
The Great Escape
Always remember that the reason why you are looking for love is because it exists! It is somewhere out there! The great news is that it has been found!
No it isn’t a place where you can go and experience it.
It isn’t an event you can partake of.
It isn’t a thing that you can keep.
It comes in the form of a person – the person of Jesus Christ!
The only person who is infinite enough to give you real love. Love that will last. Love that surpasses the emotions and goes through even the spiritual, physical, and unknown. Love that is so simple to explain, yet it is too complex to understand.
It is the love that we are looking for.
Finally, the cheese!
Oh, and it’s more than just a fairytale! It’s historical! And it is existent even now. You can have it if you would just ask.
“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” – Romans 10:9-10
Stop Running
All those planned dates you have right now? That guy who’s texting you every night promising you all his love and even the happiest future?
Screw it.
You don’t need to run on this rat race. There is no cheese there.
I tell you the truth, that empty feeling can only be really filled by the one who loves you best – Jesus Christ.
How do you escape the rat race of love, courtship and relationships?
Fill yourself with the love of an infinite God who died in your stead on the Cross.
Only then will you have escaped this unending race of stop-and-go emotions.
