Love in All its Many Formulations

Love. What a loaded word… it stirs all kinds of emotions just hearing it much less feeling it. In love, love you, love you like a brother, true love, love at first sight, unrequited love, falling in love… we have more versions of love in our society than there are types of snowflakes in the winter. But what’s at the core of all of these types of love, and what does all of it mean?

I believe, and this is just my opinion (much like the rest of this site), love is a lot of things, but at its core those things we have a hard time explaining. Love is easily confused for many other things such as dependency, lust, infatuation, admiration, or obsession. But there is an element of all of these things mixed up in real love.

Movie love, much like most things in the movies, is the archetypal love, the perfect love, or the very imperfect kind of love – the perfect version of something whether it’s good or bad. But very often these images of how it’s ‘supposed’ to be skews our perception of love in real life. We attempt to make our lives reflect the love of movies, or even worse, daytime television.

But, there is something to be said about all love – if it’s good and true it makes you feel great more often than anything else. There are times when love strips you of your security, throws you naked into the violent streets of self examination, testing you like a Spartan in an emotional battle against yourself. But if that love is true, and you’re ready for it, or not ready for it but want it more than anything, it can always, without fail be yours.

Whether it’s battle hardened love, puppy love, fraternal love, sororal love, parental love, passionate heart wrenching can’t-stand-to-be-away-from-you-for-two-seconds love, if it doesn’t make you feel good, make you feel happy, and complete, and safe… then it’s not love. Real love is a complement to your personality, a complement to your soul and if it hurts all the time, if it makes you feel badly about yourself, then it’s not love – it’s something masquerading as love.  Good and real love heals, and comforts, and consoles your heart and your soul.