Who's the Star?

"I once took this English class in college, and we had been going over a brief, very literature and "English" way of seeing a worldview of love. One thing that really stuck out to me was one of my professors points and more importantly a video and quote he used to illustrate his point. My professors third point in his lecture was the 'requisite of love - the royal law of love'. He went on from there to explain that to love someone one you must be able to recognize our sameness, and to have a loving appreciation of uniqueness (how vastly different we all are).  He then clicked his laptop and this quote appeared on the projector in front of me and what I read hit me right in the very center of my heart:

 "Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real." Iris Murdoch

Oh, ouch! It hit me after I read it a second time how very guilty I am of committing this crime too. What Murdoch, in this simple one sentence, conveys is that until you take the spotlight off of yourself and realize you are not the star of the universe; until you do this you will not be able to love. And yes Iris Murdoch is right, how 'difficult of a realization' this is. I think to some degree we all see ourselves as the stars in our own movies. And that the rest of the people in our life play principle characters and may very well win Oscars in this life for best supporting actress or best supporting actor. However, we are the star! Yet it did ever occur to you that the person you passed in the hallway at work or school, just once (you'll never see them again) thinks the same very thing about themselves? To each other we're simply extras in each others movie...yet we're starring in our own movie. I'd never realized how, without even trying, self centered I was. How could I be so caught up in whats happening around me that I didn't stop to notice the 'extras' in 'my movie'?! Everyone has a story, and their story affects how they act day to day, and that story deserves to be heard. I think that's what true love is, or maybe this chips away at what true love is. It's kinda like that line from Les Miserables,

"To love another person is to see the face of God"

 Because of this simple general education class I now have a brand new perspective on people that I pass in the hallway's, the person I sit next to at a stoplight. What's their story? What have they been through? And if given the chance would I love them enough to listen to their story? I think that's what true love is, or definitely a big part, not focusing on yourself and your life but seeing the 'extras' in your life and making them 'the stars' of the show."

 --Maggie Quick, Guest Contributor