Names

Why are names so important? Why is it that we feel the need to know the names of others or to have them know ours? Romeo would have us believe perhaps that they are not all that important after all " that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" ( not an exact quote but I think I got the general gist of what he says). Yet often when another does not know our name we feel snubbed or unwanted. If we forget anothers' name we feel embarrassed or ashamed. Why is that? Do our names define us? Any thoughts?

Love

Today in Sacrament meeting I was pondering what it means to love, what is love and why do we love? The Bishop said in a recent conversation I had with him that we love others because of what they have done for us, that I love my mom because of what she has done for me. I do not mean to say he is wrong, I believe that that is a part of what love is but I think that it is just a surface glance of what love is. So then what is love? I thought that if I could not answer this question, at least in part, then I cannot say why I love anyone, why they love me, or why God loves everyone. I thought about this for a long time, if we only love because of what someone has done or will do for us then God wouldn’t love any of us. and we wouldn’t love those who commit crimes or who wrong us. This couldn’t be right. The purest of love transcends this definition of love. But there did seem to be a nugget of truth within this statement. After all most of the time that we love it is people we get along well with. Curiously enough I thought of the saying “misery loves company” to come up with the beginning of my definition of love. I thought that maybe this is also true of love, maybe it is it’s very essence. After all if God is love and His purpose is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, than loves purpose is to bring more people to it. So I think that love is that light/goodness that calls to the light/goodness in others. It seeks after the potential growth of that light/goodness in others, however minuscule that light may be at the moment. As long as we can sense so much as a hope or potential or possibility of that light we will love them because the light in us reaches out to that potential. Since everyone has at least a hope of that light somewhere within the recesses of their soul this makes it possible for God who is light/goodness incarnate to love them. I think the greater the light we have the easier it is to find traces of the light in others and as long as we can find it in others we can build it so that both our light and their grows. I think then that service is the tool which we use to reach out to that light in others, to build it, strengthen it, foster its growth and encourage it. Another thought, perhaps this is why the Lord cautions us so much against judging other, because when we judge others we blind ourselves to the light that is in them and focus only on the darkness. Nothing could be so tragic because it cuts both ways, by judging you are hurting your own potential growth as much as if not more than you are hurting the other person. We would never physically blind ourselves on purpose so why do we do it so frequently spiritually?