A work in progress

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Warning: the following will kill the “magic” of love for you. Like the magician’s livelihood, it is the mystery that keeps it alive. Whether you want to leave it alone is up to you; but sometimes, that magician is a jerk and makes your wallet disappear. If you’d like to make sure that doesn’t happen, read on.

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The one thing about love that makes it so difficult for us all, is the complete lack of any real rules or guidelines. We are left to make our own understanding of this vague feeling. What we’re here to do today, is to define what love is exactly. It’s very important to know at least this much; as G.I. Joe once said, “Knowing is half the battle!” Here’s what they didn’t teach you in school, kids.

Love is simple.

Essentially, love is caring deeply for someone.

That’s it. You already knew that much, didn't you? Most everything written here, you’ll already know to some extent. The trick here is pruning the unnecessary (and often downright wrong) romantic notions that convolute the matter.

First, les us address the belief that there are many different "kinds of love". This is nonsense; love is love. There are merely different levels of relationships, with varying, arbitrarily established degrees of intimacy and time spent together. It's very important to understand this difference.

Speaking of which, our society’s system of relationships is somewhat broken. For some reason, we tend to reserve all our love and intimacy for a special relationship we have with but one other, which we hope will eventually become marriage. There is much wrong with this system. Granted, marriage in itself is a great thing, and it is generally ideal to live with another that one loves; but why should we only give our love to just one person? When we limit ourselves like this, we leave our other relationships lacking. It should not be weird to cuddle with a friend, or tell them that you love them. It is precisely because we do not properly love our friends, that we are so eager to find our life-long mate, as that is the only relationship in which we allow ourselves to truly love.

There is a lovely lie that one might like to live, the one true love; but the whole concept is just a romantic dream. Being romantic is fine and all, but you must make sure that the romance complements your life, and does not limit it. “The one”, for example, is a hindrance to oneself because it implies that love is something that is found. Some go so far as to imagine that love will find them.

If you are to take nothing else from this message, as least understand this much:

Love is not something to be found. It is a bond that you make.

If you believe in love at first sight, then you are an unfortunate fool. That is not love. Rather, it is infatuation.