To Love Is To Climb

Lately my words have lived in politics. Meetings with candidates, conversations with senior staff, long days spent shaping campaigns and policy, conversations that continue even now, every day, when it should be time for deep rest and reflection. But full disconnection feels impossible given the state of our country and the world. Still, today, something in me has been thinking less about strategy and policy, and more about love.

Love is something we have all felt, or long to feel, or perhaps have never quite felt at all. Sitting with that thought today, a few things became clear to me. Not original thoughts, maybe. Just the residue of experience, of conversations, of listening closely to my own conscience. And what settled in me was this: easy love is fast and it is high. Real love is slow and it is hard.

I want to be clear about what I mean. The love that is temporary tends to be easy. The love that is permanent, the kind meant to last, is difficult. It asks for patience. It comes with aches, with friction, with conversations you would rather avoid but cannot. And more often than not, lasting love does not die from conflict. It dies from silence.

Easy love is like standing before a mountain and simply taking it in. It is beautiful. It is grand. The sky glows behind it, clouds drift above it, the sun spills gold across its ridge, and the feeling is almost like a high. But real love is not standing at the base admiring the view. Real love is climbing.

Climbing means slipping on loose rock and holding on anyway. It means your heart pounding, your breath short, sweat on your back. It means pausing to rest, then rising again, telling yourself quietly to keep going, not to give up. I am not speaking of toxic love here, the kind that harms you and should be left behind without hesitation. I am speaking of healthy love, the kind worth every difficult step.

Most of us begin this climb carrying something heavy. Childhood wounds, old traumas, some healed, most still tender. But here is what I have learned: healing does not happen while you admire the mountain from a distance. It happens on the climb itself, in the reaching for another hand when your own grip starts to fail.

Picture two people standing at the base, looking up, hand in hand. It is a beautiful sight. The height of the peak, the trees along its slopes, the whole scene magnificent from where they stand. Now picture those same two people actually climbing. That is where real love lives, and that is what a lasting relationship looks like. Supporting one another. Speaking honestly instead of falling into silence, because silence is where love quietly loses its way and, too often, where it dies.

You keep climbing anyway. Pushing each other forward, morally, emotionally, sometimes simply by holding on. It is not easy. It takes time, and it costs something. There will be small cuts along the way, thorns you did not see coming. But you do not give up on each other, and you do not give up on where you are headed together.

That, I believe, is the love worth fighting for.