Love: The Street Fighter

They say there is a thin line between love and hate.  It's an understandable sentiment, but terribly inaccurate in my opinion.  I say love personifies a street fighter.

   
True love is so much more than just a feeling.  It's more than just a sentiment written in the annals of our memory banks for us to catalog and reference when the time calls for it.

No, LOVE is the greatest weapon for good in the universe.  LOVE is a street fighter who is ready at all times to go toe to toe with any opponent foolish enough to believe they will put an end to its undefeated record.  LOVE does not give up, shut up, or put up with anything in its way that would cause it to fail.  LOVE does not know the agony of defeat, only the thrill of victory.
   
For example, as a novice in jujitsu, I had trouble with the training at first.  Inherently, I'm the type of person that always wants to help...never to harm. There was a function in me that hated to see someone tap because of pain I was inflicting.  The crazy thing was that it didn't matter if it was being done to me.  I had a mental block when it came time for me to do it to others. 
   
I was taught the necessity of adopting a warrior ethos, whether in training or on the street.  We train hard because negative folks won't show mercy on the streets.  We learn pressure points and choke holds, not because we want to abuse our authority, but in case the situation arises, we will have the ability to combat the danger by doing as little damage as possible.
   
And if the challenge persists, we know how to kill it if need be.

LOVE is that kind of street fighter...who knows how to kill, but uses it as a last resort. 

I'm realizing that the essence of love is change.  It never leaves me the same.  It never causes me to regress to the vortex of negativity.  It always stretches me and leaves me better than I was before.  No matter what pain I encounter while training with it, I realize it is all for the greater good.


I'm learning that love in its most pure, concentrated form has nothing to do with emotion.  This street fighter is all about action, not feeling.  When I reduce it to a mere feeling, it has no choice but to be fleeting.  When I make love an emotion, it's easy to hate it when I encounter pain, because the emotion I'm dealing with is actually presenting itself as a counterfeit deception to the reality of true love.
    
True love has very little to do with fairy tales and warm fuzzies.  It has everything to do with unadulterated truth that refuses to be diluted by disrespect and delusion.
    
And LOVE is what I desire to motivate every action I take and every word I speak...when the thin line between love and hate is shattered, I want to be that street fighter who overcomes hatred, fear and negativity with the greatest weapon for good in the world.
    
Hadouken!