when love is about you and him hogging the camera limelight that everyone else in the background becomes a blurMy older and wiser generations of womanly figures in the family often tell me that it is easier and better to be with someone who loves you more than you do. I am most convicted at that time that the option to be loved, to bask in all the attention and to swim in all that passion was definitely easier than loving someone who loves you less or is unsure whether he/she loves you.
But there's so much pressure in being loved. It's far from what i used to think. You start to feel guilty that you don't feel the same way. This person is feeling all these strong feelings for you and all you can do when they say "hey, I really love you, you know that right?" is "yeah, I know..." And to see the look of hurt sweep past his face as his feelings aren't reciprocated again... that's kind of tough.
Love is more than just a feeling and it is not just a feeling...
When I was less matured (ahem ahem!), I believed that love is just some disease you catch. like the occasional flu virus that goes around. when love is in the air you seem to just catch one of those you-jump-i-jump viruses. It's contagious! You can't help when you catch it, and when you do, you come down with a series of euphoric and sometimes distressing symptoms like the infamous butterflies in the stomach, light-headedness, and general inability to function, talk or act normally. you generally evolved to another species of homo sapien. But the older I get, the more I have begun to realize that love is really so much more than just a mysterious passing ailment, striking at random, and leaving you flustered (and in my case damaged) in its wake. It is, not a force of nature, but perhaps the one human emotion that separates us from nature. I remember thinking to myself during the worst moments of some of my relationships, "If only we were stuck on a deserted island together, this relationship would be so blissful." At the time I didn't realize the absurdity of this statement. Any relationship would work in the absence of outside variables. Scheduling conflicts, monetary concerns, others competing for one's attention. It's how you work through these things that truly tests the strength of your love and commitment. Love is not just a feeling. It's how committed you are when you are both faced with the obstacles that the world throws in your path. one of it being..
unbashfully declaring your love for another in a busy and noisy restuarant filled with minions who cannot understand public display of affection...
Love is sacrifice...
And that means putting the other person's happiness before your own. What would the words "I love you" mean if they didn't cost anything? I don't mean diamonds or a new car, although that often ends up being the case. In some way, shape, or form love always involves a sacrifice. Whether it be the time you spend with that person, the pride you set aside to forgive them, or some of the freedom that you had while single to be wherever you wanted with whomever or pledging your kidney and cornea to another. And not least of all, you sacrifice the possibility that you may be happier or more compatible with someone else. and that with less a kidney and no eyes to see, you can still be on cloud nine with someone out there amongst billions of potential candidates. You don't care-- because you're in love. Esentially, you are saying, "Perhaps there is someone out there that's better for me, but I don't care because I love you." Maybe that's the sacrifice that means the most.
girls with faces like that being with guys with faces like that -both are sacrificing alot, trust me!! Love is a choice...
I guess in some ways it seems more romantic if we think of love as this irresistible force that overcomes us at it's convenience. However, you can't commit to a feeling-- you can commit to a choice. I think the older you get you begin to realize that it is so much more than just a feeling. Sure, that's a part of it, but you gotta remember that a lot of that is just adulation, infatuation, and hormones. Feelings come and go, and even the most passionate of flames will die down to a slow burn. Basing your love on just the feeling alone means that the moment that head-spinning rush is gone, so is your relationship. sad, but true. only shallow individuals who cannot hold responsibility for their own feelings will based their love on the high feeling and when someone comes along and shower them with the attention they have beend deprived, the relationship becomes a bore and nothing more than just a past.
Even if you have to make a conscious decision that you love someone, it doesn't take away from the emotion or the meaning. The feeling obviously has to be there for you to imagine that you can endure into the future with this person.
Often times when people talk about what it "means" to be in love, they're really speaking about what they think it means to be a good partner. How to develop a strong relationship and union, and not about what it means to be in love.
The meaning is in the fact that, love by it's very nature necessarily has to be a choice. How meaningful would someone's love be if they were forced into it, against their will? Would you want someone to say, "I love you, because I have no choice" ? Well, maybe that does sound pretty good... as a line in a movie. But if you get down to it, how is that any different from putting a gun to their head? People who believe that you don't have the right or ability to choose who you love end up calling you at 3am just to breathe silently on the phone, and randomly showing up at places where you happen to be.
Our concept of love has been shaped by society, shakespeare, fine art, and soapy Korean dramas. And although the child-like idealism and lofty romanticism often portrayed is a beautiful and hardly insignificant part of its essence, it's only a single facet. True love is something that grows and matures over time. It transforms itself from the doe-eyed puppy love of chlildhood, to the lust driven maelstrom of adolescence-- and finally to a mature, full acceptance of that other person as a part of your life for all their flaws and virtues. Being in love is easy because it's one thing in life you don't have to try for, to strive for, to work at. It should come naturally and effortlessly. However, to be in a "successful," enduring, permanent, relationship filled with love - that's where all the other discussion about sacrifice and priorities come in. And although it's not always as fun and carefree as a schoolboy crush or a summer fling, what you have left in the end is far more enduring, grounded, and meaningful.
a moment like this, some people wait a lifetime, for that one special kiss, it is the choices you make that allows for a moment like this to happen
p/s: thank you vjy for allowing me to borrow your pictures. your sacrifice is for the greater good of mankind..
