They've made movies about it. They've written books and songs about the various forms of it, but why is it so intoxicating? Why does it make us lose sense? Why does such an intangible concept, love, have such a profoundly bothersome effect on all of us?
Well, you've come to the wrong person, because I'm still trying to figure it out myself, but lately this has been nagging at me. In its best forms, the idea of love seems to be the most remarkable feeling with that perfect person, where it appears as though your entire life is in harmony. In its most tragic states, love causes us to do terrible things, or it downright kills us. Yet the underlying goal of most media or entertainment is love, where the protagonist has to get the girl and look good doing it. Or if you've seen "Me Before You," you can be a seemingly sarcastic dude who just so happens to be quadriplegic and still woo the woman. Either way, love is everywhere, but here's where it causes problems.
Real love in real life is not how the media always portrays it. Here's a classic example: a girl develops a crush on a boy when she knows it probably will not work out. She devotes much of her time to daydreaming about him and trying fruitlessly to attract his feelings. Ultimately, her emotions are not reciprocated, and the girl is left heartbroken. Change the gender pronouns as they apply to you.
How many of my readers have related to this vague example at some point in time?
We, as humans, pour our love out to people that don't care about us at all, and then we're left surprised and defeated when it doesn't work out. Some people rinse and repeat this example, expecting new results each time, and all it does is create a vicious circle of pain and an eventual bitterness towards love.
I find it strange how a single emotion can have such an impact on us. It makes us crazy, where we feel extreme jealousy when someone gets too close to the one we love. It makes us angry, when the one we love doesn't respond to our messages. It makes us sad or depressed, when the one we love does not love us so we curl into a ball of self-loathing denial.
Most of all, it makes us learn. Love will break us down into little pieces. However, it is only when we are shattered apart do we crouch down close to ourselves and survey the damage. We examine all of our broken shards, and we put the puzzle that is us back together, and all the while, we come to understand things that we never knew.
We are all so desperate for this fleeting human emotion, because even though it comes with a slew of side effects, the high that comes with it is apparently worth the aftermath.
I believe that is what makes love so intriguing. We know about the horrors that accompany loving people. We've seen these sufferings in movies and books, yet every time our eyes come to rest on that one person, we still release the little bird in our hearts, and we let it sing.
I believe John Green said it well:
"True love will triumph in the end-- which may or not be a lie, but if it is a lie, then it's the most beautiful lie we have."
Indeed, it is.
