#33

Love is something very important to me. My definition of love is very, very simple, yet at the same time it’s describing something more profound than, to me, everything in the world. There are so many facets to it, so many faces and sitations where it bends and, perhaps, warps to other, different things.

Let me explain. To me, love is a passion. It is not a feeling, it is not an emotion, it is not a desire. It’s not transient like any of these things, it’s something much much deeper. It doesn’t ask, it commands. It isn’t when it’s worthwhile, when it’s easy, it’s omnipresent. It isn’t the reason why you do some things, it is the reason for everything and your very presence on the earth. It’s something fundamental, so to speak.

Not everyone loves; in fact, my sort of love isn’t as commonplace as the definition of love held by most today. Love is not two teens holding hands who like similar movies and do similar things. It is not two older people who’ve stayed together for all their lives because of the children, because it was easier, because of religious reasons and because it felt right. It is not any of these things. To me love is not really truly obtainable, nor ever fully achieved. It’s something you reach out for and live for; it’s transcedant of the object, it’s something much much more. And no matter how much you try, you’ll never really hold it for more than the fleeting instants that shift into view when you least expect them and slip away again before you fully realize what it is.

To me, love is not unbroken, it is unbreakable. It sickens me how many couples believe they have ‘real love’ but when it comes down to it, one or the other, or more often both, don’t have what it takes to lay down everything, everything in their life for their partner and more importantly for love itself. To me, there is no other answer, there is only love. What good is your job? Your money? Your things? What good is your personal security? Your happiness? Your state of mind? What good is family? Friends? What good is faith, what good is belief? What good is anything without love? Worthless. Pointless. Insubstantial. If you’re unwilling to lay down these things, unwilling to lay down everything, then I would tell you: “You do not love. You merely care, perhaps a great deal, but you only care. That is not love. Love is selfless. Love is everything. You aren’t reaching out with everything in every fiber of your being; you won’t ever hold and have love this way. Are you satisfied with your less all-encompassing, less reverent, simpler happinesses? I hope you are, for true, honest love is beyond those who can’t lay down it all, most especially those who can’t lay themselves down before it. That’s not to say that there aren’t other valid ways of living, nor is it to say that there aren’t other things you can be happy and satisfied with. But those things are not love.”

Yes, I realize that many, perhaps even most, won’t agree with me. And I’d say they’re no bothering to look the situation in the eye, they’re too wrapped up in the society’s childish points of view on what love is. Love is not a strong strong feeling of caring towards someone. There are many many ways of describing that emotion: adour, fervor, adulation, obsession, idolatry, friendship, lust, worship. But it is not love, love is beyond the other, Real Love is Forever. Not unbroken, but rather unbreakable. Eternal. More eternal than the very life you live, more eternal than the roads you walk, the thoughts you think, more eternal than the trees, the seas, the skies and the sun. Love is something more. There is nothing more important than it. Nothing.