by A. Sophist

Created on: July 01, 2009

Love, in its most optimistic form, is boundless - able to forgive even the worst of sins. Unfortunately, optimism can only take a couple so far. It's up to them to decide how far THEY can take the relationship.

At some point, we all feel love. In some form or another, people tend to develop overwhelming feelings toward others - feelings brought on by a shared ideal or passion. That initial attraction sets us off in the direction of love. We crave the attention and the compassion. By nature, we are social creatures, and our need for companionship runs deeper than what we are able to control.

For some, love is respect; for others, love is adoration; but for many, it is simply understanding - the understanding of where the other is coming from and where they are going.

Love by itself cannot last forever; it needs to be rekindled from time to time. Without both parties working toward the same goal (be it children, marriage, a career, or whatever it was that brought them together in the first place), love will eventually wane. The passion and energy from the original spark will only last so long.

Love is ever changing as we grow older, but one principle remains the same: Love is a balance between oneself and one's family; focusing too much on one will force the other to fade.

Loving yourself is crucial since you cannot know what you want until you know what you deserve. Self-doubt leads us to insecurity, which will eventually erode our trust in others. Without trust, a relationship cannot endure. Loving oneself is more than simply accepting and embracing our own faults and shortcomings. It's the knowledge of what we are capable of achieving, despite the hand that has been dealt. We learn this only by pushing ourselves harder and harder at every turn. The moment we stop trying is the moment when love begins to fade away.

If love is about trust and we fail ourselves, how can we expect anyone to have faith in us? I believe that is where love often dies. We get caught up in the moment. We try so hard to hold on to that wonderful feeling. Eventually, we lose sight of what is happening around us. We get so caught up in trying to savor that moment that we become complacent and scared of change since the next moment might not be as good as this one. By the time we realize how long we have gone without progressing, the people around us tend to have moved on, leaving us to face the next chapter alone.

The ironic part is that we already know all of this. It has been said a thousand times before. Yet, despite this cosmic wisdom, we make the same mistakes time and time again. What is it about facing ourselves do we find so terrifying? Is it that the answers are those that we cannot accept, or is it simply that we just want to believe that we are too smart to make the same mistakes that our friends around us have made and somehow we are better than that?

I think we are all destined to learn it the hard way. We must fall down on occasion in order to learn how to pick ourselves back up. Some of us are smart enough to skip all of the nonsense and avoid the pain of losing love by avoiding love altogether. Those like me would take that pain any day in exchange for those moments of happiness. For it is those moments that remind us what this struggle is all about.

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