Friday, October 15, 2004
Wow, how long since my last insightful post?
I wanted to respond to someone else's post, but I didn't want to leave a tome for a comment, so here it is. "What is love to you? What makes you in love and what puts you out of love?" Kyle Neely(Oct 10, 2004 post). How many times have I addressed this very topic before? Way too many, but my opinion changes almost daily, and I refuse to be held responsible for anything said more than 2 weeks ago. After 14 days, all becomes null and void, so here's a new one.
I once asked if there was any difference between truly being in love and truly believing you are. I used to argue that the difference was indistinguishable. Now I say there is no difference. If love is an emotion, then you are in love when you believe you are and when you say you are. I am happy when I believe myself to be happy and sad when I feel sad, so why should love be any different? If a man* says he is in love, then he is. No one can decide better than their own self. And if love is a choice, which I also believe, then the same is true. You love whom you choose to, and there is no right or wrong in it. You cannot tell someone he is not really in love when he says he is because you can't have any idea what he thinks, feels, and decides.
Nor can you believe yourself to be in love when you truly aren't. I've never loved someone whom I didn't know I loved, and the reverse is also true. I've really loved everyone that I ever believed I loved. Though those feelings may have faded on my part sooner than theirs and caused things to end on an ugly note, my feelings were no less real or true at their peak than were those of the other person. So I will not say I was fooled into believing I loved someone or that I never did in the first place or that I lied. I may be fickle, but I am no liar.
Don't say true love never dies. It does. Love fades. Even in marriage, but friendship can be forever. Love is no constant in my friendships; it fades sometimes. But if the friendship itself remains constant, there is always room for that love to grow again, to grow with us, as we ourselves change and grow into new people. They say a person reinvents himself every 5 years or so. For some it happens even more often than that. You don't know whether you're going to love the person I am 5 years from now, but you could learn to, or at least be my friend until you can.
This is what love is to me and what it is to be in love. Don't say a person is too young to love. Ever. A person may do as he pleases, and if that person dares to love, then he will love. Let him. And more power to him.
So what puts you out of love? Feelings fade, people change, and nothing ever lasts forever. We are all constantly growing up and changing, and if a person cannot learn to accept change in someone or even in himself, then he will "fall out of love." I don't think a person should be faulted for no longer possessing the same feelings he once did. Lying about it is wrong, and not trying to work through it is wrong, and now I sound like a hypocrite, but also judging is wrong. And you've no right to tell a person his feelings and his actions are wrong, only that you disagree with them.
And I invite you to disagree with me. I invite you to disagree and hate my interpretation of love, to disagree but enjoy my thoughts, or maybe to realize I might be onto something. Whatever it is, I want to hear it. I discourage flames, but I still want to hear it. This is only what I think and not very interesting to me alone, so tell me what you think. I want to know what's in your head! But now I am done, so let me hear you.
*I just use the masculine third person throughout so this makes more sense than saying "one" all the time and to keep it unified.