Looking For Love?

I think that what people are looking for is love. Yeah, sure, you say, we knew that. I know you did, and people talk about it all the time. This so-called acceptance of something so basic, beautiful and important in our society can actually have an opposite effect. Oh, sure, love, you say. Whatever. Been there, done that.
But the thing is, hearing so much about love and wisdom and everything actually seems to make us MORE cynical. We think, love is all around, it's so magical, it's all going to be okay. And then we live in a war-torn, poverty-stricken world with hatred and cynicism, and it's all well and good to trust in love, but sometimes we lack evidence of goodness and love.
So we think of it as something great, but at the same time a little too good to be true. And the more we see idealized love stories, we feel that OUR love (or lack thereof) is inadequate--we can never be scripted Hollywood stars with perfect lighting, hair and artfully smudged mascara. We can only read and watch and listen... And sometimes we see perfect (or what we view as perfect, but that's another post) love in pop culture (in the Titanic theme) or in everyday life (our grandparents, or the mother and child we see on the street). (Parentheses will now stop.)
But all in all, we think of love as some far and distant god, or planet, or an unexplored region that we will go to, someday. I guess. But only sort of, because we're very busy, and sometimes we don't really have time or energy to devote to love, because we have jobs and lives that are above--or below, depending on how you look at it--the quest for true love and meaning and the wisdom that allegedly comes with it.
And in the meantime, it makes us uncomfortable. We worry that it will never happen to us, that we are unworthy anyway, that if and when it does happen it will be a distraction from all we've worked for. And that scares us, and so we put it off with big talk and cynicism and pretend we don't care. And hope that eventually not caring will make someone care about us, or make us care about love.
So what can we do? Trapped in a cynical society steeped in fairytale endings and the contradictory hope that we shouldn't care too much, but love and caring is the only thing that can save us? This contradiction is the problem that faces us, but unfortunately it is all around us all the time, and so loses its meaning. When magic and wisdom are all around us, they become the norm, and we fail to recognize them.
I guess all we can really do is try; try to care, try to recognize love when we see it, and cherish it for what it is: simple and good. And we can try to believe, that among all of the other problems that we have to solve, we can solve ourselves, or at least figure out how to figure out ourselves, which might be the actual reason we're here.
And I think that however clichéd it may seem, we have to remind ourselves that among all of our searches and travels and early morning dashes to the supermarket, it's true. We are really only looking for love.