Some years ago someone asked me if love was defined by the fact that it always ended. Well seeing how all the great romances we've ever read about have ended, not just ended but done so with disastrous dramatic ends respectively, you’d think that was true.
So does love mean you have to die or that it has to end somehow – drastically in death or without death in a mutual parting of sorts? Is it great love that ends or is it not love at all?
Well, I would go for the last explanation. I think I would simply say that if it ended then it wasn’t love. Leave being the greatest romance of your life.
I’m not saying you didn’t feel love, I’m just saying it wasn’t love between you two.
I’ve a theory that one sided love exists and sometimes it exists between two people towards each other but they never understand that the love they feel is not for the other, it’s for the feeling of being in love.
‘I love being in love.’ Heard yourself say that much? It’s because being in love is a state of mind, it’s beautiful, amazing, shocking and inspiring all at once. It lifts you off your feet, soaring above the clouds. It blinds you and excites you to no ends. That incessant need to be a part of the world that makes you tingle from head to toe? It’s the feeling of being in a state of mind that pleases you that unfortunately you believe is love.
Love is not a state of mind. It’s an experience, a way of life, an all encompassing moment that stretches from the first second that the state of mind is entered and lasts to the end of your days. It’s an eternal feeling that stays with you even when you’ve calmed down, and all that initial excitement has ended. It’s responsible for the moments when all you do is sit in the same room reading a book or just watching television. The days when you don’t even talk and yet know that the feeling is still in there, under those layers of comfort.
Being in love is a heightened state of being, while love itself sobers you. It makes you consider the future while forgetting the past. Love makes you see the whole rather than the tiny detail that can be solved by looking at the larger picture. It makes you see the important details while sidestepping the mistakes you might make in moments of stupor.
Its sanity enshrouded with responsibility. The feeling of knowing that more is possible, all you have to do is work towards it, rather than give up and lie down or as in most pseudo-love cases die.
It’s something I’ve understood from watching others and going through things myself. Love in its many forms is responsibility, growth, understanding, change and a little bit of magic. It’s holding on when you thought you couldn’t. Its fighting harder when you think there’s nothing left. It’s knowing what the losses are and being sure that a win is possible. It isn’t blind optimism, but it is optimistic about the future.
Giving up is easy. Endings are easy. They cause you pain and then you move on. Holding on is the hardest thing but it is worth every second. Knowing what you are holding onto is important but when its love, you know. It’s never one sided, it’s always a collaboration. When you’re holding on, someone else is holding on too.
Having great love is the moment when you’re old and decrepit and know that you were happiest when you were making mistakes together, squabbling in the market, laughing about the kids, changing diapers at 2 am, wearing funny sweaters at Christmas, sharing late meals, working hard towards a future together.
There was a time I suppose, when I might’ve given up and just let things slide like it was the great romance of my life and I was going to have a sober sane life thereafter. But I realised I already had that, that the last great romance of my life was going to last for the rest of my life.
A future was blossoming around me as I lived the love I had. And I didn’t do it alone, we held on together, through normalcy into an adult realisation that romantic dreams always blossom, how you bloom with them is the difference. You can stop at the gorgeous divine short-lived flowers or you can outlive the hazy flowery stage and become the soothing mellow fruit that spawns seeds that will grow into new trees continuing the cycle.
So you tell me, do you really think love is defined by an end? Or do you, like me believe in love that is the future and its steady slim road that few flowers stick around to take?
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