Have you ever wondered what love is? What does it mean to be loved? How do you love? And why is society so obsessed with this feeling?
Since I started thinking of creating my own blog, I wondered which topic I should take into consideration first. Which subject would be appropriate enough for my first post and, how could I introduce myself and my thoughts to you – my dear reader. I have chosen to share my thoughts about love. Everybody knows that there are various types of love. You can love your best friend, a member of your family, your childhood dog, or even a plushy shark that reminds you of your favorite memories. However, today I would like to share my thoughts about love in a romantic way. Why? Let’s start with a short introduction.
Since being a young girl, then a confused teenager, and finally, a young woman, I have been thinking about love. As a child growing up in a religious family, my understanding of love was a little bit limited and confusing. I was taught that love is an unconditional emotion. You are loved regardless of your behavior and beliefs. As I grew older, I concluded that I don’t love people unconditionally, so why should they love me that way? Later in my life, I went to school where I made my first friends. The love I felt toward my classmates was based on how they treated me. As you have noticed, it was not even close to unreserved feeling. I measured my friends, checked how much I could trust them. I was careful and took everything with a pinch of salt. Going forward, high school showed me another way of loving people. It wasn’t anything about being prudent or careful. I met both the wrong guys and kind ones. Some made me feel worthless, while others taught me priceless lessons. I started to associate love with sacrifice. Their feelings mattered more than mine, and I would do anything for them – just to see a smile on their face. After experiencing all the perspectives on love, I still wonder; what does love really mean? Perhaps we need to ask experts.
According to the dictionary, “Love is a feeling of strong attraction, affection, emotional attachment or concern for a person, animal, or thing.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love). I am more than convinced that after reading a definition of this complex concept, you still have no idea what love means. Am I right? So, how can we understand it better?
Most people believe that love is just an episodic state of mind. It comes, passes, and finally leaves us with a variety of emotions. It might be despair, if the person you love had to move to a different country. It might be hate, if they cheated on you. It might be relief, if you realized that they were never right for you. But what if one person could completely change the rest of your life? What if you could lose yourself in love and never come back as the same person? I believe that love is a tool for changing your life, teaching you what is right and wrong. But how can it change your life so drastically?
Once upon a time, I met a boy. I was still a teenager. Everything was messed up in my head. I tended to make really bad decisions, I didn’t know what to do and how to do it. And then he appeared – a dream guy, I am not talking about his physical appearance, but the things that he used to say, the visions that he had in his mind, the rules that he followed. He was the opposite of people that I had known before. As you may assume, I fell in love with him. However, it wasn’t so simple. We mainly talked on FaceTime because of the long distance. And obviously – it didn’t work out. Throughout my “broken heart” phase, I was sure that I loved him. But what if the truth was different?
I didn’t love him for his personality or his appearance. I didn’t love him because he was smart or athletic. I didn’t love him because he also wanted to have three kids and a white house in the future. Finally, I didn’t love him because we shared hobbies. I “loved” him because he made me love myself.
I have always dreamed big. My family always used to say that I was delusional and needed to follow their path. I thought that dreams were just dreams – not goals. Nevertheless, he made me believe in myself and made them come true. During one of our conversations, he said: “One day, I will be walking down the street. I will stop at the local store to buy cigarettes, like always. I will look down to check what is new in freshly published newspaper. I will see you, on the front page, smiling as usual. Next to you will be a huge heading: “The Woman Most Likely to Do Anything”. I will say to myself: “I always knew that she would do it”. Then I will walk away, smiling to myself”. Those words hit me so hard that I now define our relationship by these sentences.
After our break-up, I made the riskiest decision of my life – one I had dreamed about since I was a child. And every time when I talk about him, I do not talk about how much I loved him. I talk about how he pushed me to make my dreams come true. How he forced me to get out of my comfort zone. How he was the first person that truly believed in me and my possibilities. He was a lesson, a hard lesson but the profitable one. After the breakup and every situation that happened to me at that time, I still wonder if it was something near to love. Is being loved look like this? Or maybe, I just needed a person who would be kind and make me a better person. Nevertheless, I have continued looking for the meaning of love.
The thing is that I am not the only person who is looking for love, who is believing in love and trying to understand how to love properly.
It is assumed that our generation is more open to relationships and finding love. Everyone is looking for somebody to go out with, to cuddle in autumn evening, drink coffee and talk about the future. But what if we are not really looking for love? What if we are just seeking any form of connection in the world dominated by social media? We just want to have a label “I have a boyfriend/girlfriend” on Instagram page. I have these suppositions because of the invention of relation called “situationship”. If you haven’t heard about it, let me explain how I see it. We can go on a date but it’s nothing serious. We can text each other all day and night but don’t expect commitment. I can tell you that I see you as my future wife/husband but don’t think that you will become this person. Overall, situationships are about trying to build something, but always keeping the escape route open, in case things get “too real”. Is that what love looks like today?
I have never been a fan of this type of relationship. To me, it seems like waste of your precious time. But what if I got too skeptical? I feel like love must be black and white, but maybe it is not the point of loving. Maybe the full engagement in relationships when you are young is just pointless. “You are young, have fun” I heard, but what if real love can be pure like our grandfathers’ relationships. Maybe love is about sacrifice. About giving your heart to someone without fear of being “too much”. Maybe love is about focusing on one person, dreaming about a shared future. Or maybe, all these “episodes” of love guide us toward deeper understanding of how to love and who are we when we do.
My dear reader, I am leaving all the questions with you. I am more than sure that at least once in your lifetime you have been wondering about the same topic. You have been looking for the same answers. Have you found them?
Below every post, I would love to encourage you to share your own thoughts in the comments. My blog is not about finding the answers or giving you advice on the specific topic. But it is about wondering and sharing experiences with each other. So please, don’t hesitate – write down what you think. Moreover, at the very end of some posts, I would like to attach my poem related to love in some way. Check it and tell me what you do think while reading it.
See you soon, my dear reader.
“Only you” Aleksandra Binkowska
I was walking around, paying attention to nothing, or to something less meaningful. I heard so many laughs, I saw so many tears and smiles on people’s faces. “Everybody has a different story,” I thought, but where is mine, my happy ending. I did not care at all, started to pay more attention to ordinary passersby.
One touch from stranger, and I felt a weird look on my face. Not the ordinary one, but cozier, something like my mom’s look. But you were a stranger, right? How could I feel something if I didn’t know you? I didn’t know your touch, the scent of your freshly washed hair. I didn’t know your brown, shining eyes, which would wake me up every morning. I didn’t know that your kisses would feel comfortable, not scary. I didn’t know the warmth that I would feel from your body. I didn’t know that your words would make my whole body scream: “I love you”. I didn’t know that meals prepared by you would taste like home I had never had. I didn’t know that when I looked at my future, I would see somebody else in it. I didn’t know that I would smile in the morning, dancing in my kitchen, waiting for another day next to you. I didn’t know that I would tell my grandma that I had met a guy that I wanted to marry someday. I didn’t know that I would love myself stronger, and you would become a part of my cold heart. I didn’t know that you would be my “you”.
I passed you by, I didn’t even look. The strange feeling faded. Our eyes didn’t meet again. “Excuse me?“ I heard. “You dropped something,” I heard again. Silly mind. Silly me. Silly receipt that I had dropped. Silly coincidence – or maybe fate? Once again, I was passing by all those people, smiling at them. But this time, without questioning, without doubting. It was just me, and the pride of knowing that at some point you were my “you”. It was just me, and a thought that I had already lived my happy ending – with you.