L.O.V.E

Love is an emotion. The display of love could be the strongest emotion there is and in some cases, could be the weakest. Most often, love is shown as an action and experienced as a feeling. Love can’t be put in a single way; it defines so much more; compassion, kindness, tolerance, determination, faith and many more. Again, love may refer to the need for intimacy, emotional closeness, the ‘platonicity’ of friendship or even religiously. All these things make love complex. More complex than you might think you know. So I can’t define love entirely; I’m a mere mortal. I might not even be able to do justice to the concept in this article. What I know, I’ll write.

Most of this is going to be about love between two people, the love that most people crave for. Even gay people.

My bible, specifically, 1^st Corinthians chapter 13:4-8 states that “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it’s not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love doesn’t delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails.” This definition to me encompasses everything love is. It requires so much more. People always utter the words “I love you” but do we really know what love is? Can we love patiently despite everything? Can we love selflessly? Most people can’t. Love is a choice. This brings me to the concept of loving someone and being in love with someone. To be in love, you feel devoted to another. All your focus is on your partner. You want that person in your life. You don’t consider what they can offer you but rather look towards what both of you can achieve together. There’s unity. However, when you love someone, there’s more affection and appreciation. Even when separated, you care about them and always hope for the best for them. When you love someone, there’s no intense need for closeness or intimacy. Their happiness is your comfort.

Most often, we try to portray our love as unconditional. Unconditional love is the rarest form of love. This is the kind of love where we accept whoever we love for whoever they are. Imagine you claim to love someone and yet, after the person gets paralyzed or contracts a lifelong disease, the love ‘fades’. That’s not love. And definitely not unconditional love. For those of us who experienced that kind of love close to unconditional from our mothers know what it feels like. We should try and emulate it as closely as possible. Loving someone else unconditionally may or may not be achievable. But we can try to love close to that. All we have to do is eliminate as much conditions as we can.

The love stories we see and hear about most often seem unrealistic which is true to some extent. We perceive most of it as a fairy tale. Girls thrive on these fairy tales and day-dream about what they hope their love lives would be like. At least it’s good in the sense that they want something perfect. With guys, it’s either love is written on their foreheads or the word doesn’t exist to them. For the guys in between, they’re just in a temporary phase. I’m yet to find anyone who lived “happily ever after”. We should rather hope for “happily EVEN after….”

Before we can love anybody, we should first be able to love ourselves. You can’t love someone if you don’t even know how to love. The basis of loving someone is in loving ourselves. Even in difficult times in relationships, we should look to ourselves first. Nevertheless, there’s nothing wrong with loving someone more than yourself (I think). Again, love shouldn’t be about how beautiful or sexy or tall someone is. There shouldn’t be a reason for love. Just love. We should also keep in mind that love is more about giving rather than receiving. We should have the desire to give more and not expect anything in return. Even so, if we don’t get love back, we tend to feel unwanted but the focus should be on our contribution we make to making him or her happy.

If you love someone, make them know and let it show. Don’t make them feel left out. At least once in your life, let love take over. It’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Love conquers all.