What is love? This has been the pressing question on one of my teammate's mind recently and a question that I wanted to find an answer to. Although I have never experienced love in a relationship before (sigh), I have indeed felt its presence in many forms. And because, as a human, I have the capacity to love another in the highest form, I think that also gives me the ability to imagine it and the right to write about it. Also, after watching Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and still finding myself trapped in 17th century England with British accents lingering in my head, it only seems fitting.
Love is the most mysterious of things because it doesn't seem controllable; it is something that springs up out of the corners of our hearts and soon takes over our entire body in a much too short amount of time. Is this meant to happen? Are we perhaps being told by some greater force that we are to love a certain person even if there is no rational reason for doing so? This idea troubles me for the simple fact that sometimes love is anything but the positive emotion contained within its definition. Sometimes (a lot of the time), love is hard. Love can hurt. Love can bruise. Love can torment. Why?? Why is the deepest emotion contained within the human heart allowed to hurt and uplift all at the same time? I just can't fathom how this can possibly be the case or how this is at all fair.
Then it dawned on me. Love can surely hurt and sting, but it might still be able to keep its good name. I started reading My Spiritual Journey, a semi autobiography on the current Dalai Lama (it was an amazing experience and a wonderful life decision by the way, one I will have to elaborate on in another day) and learned about love in its simplest, purest form. One main point the Dalai Lama made was that in life the most important lessons we learn and our greatest stages of growth are often found in times of hardships. Our friends - if they are indeed true friends - surely do not provide us hardships and therefore can not be counted on to help us in this area. But our enemies, they do a WONDERFUL job of testing us, hurting us, and throwing curveballs our way; and for this, we should love them. They are the ones who make us question who we are, what we stand for, and what we want to become. They are the ones who give us the greatest opportunities for growth, and we should not show any anger or hostility towards them, but rather love them all the more for this.
If this is indeed the case, that we grow the most from hardships and trying situations, well maybe then that is why love is sometimes hard, a struggle even. It would only make sense that the deepest emotion found within human hearts, an emotion that can take us to the highest of highs and the lowest of loves, would have the greatest potential to help us change for the better. When we are forced to wander through the deep valleys of a lost, unfound, or unrequited love, we walk a path that leads to personal insights and a deeper connection with the pure human being inside of us all. The human being that in its most basic form yearns for happiness. When we get to this most basic state, we feel a greater connection with ourselves, and the people around us who are all looking for the same thing. This in turn harvests a deeper love for those around us or the sole person who walked the path beside us.
Love, then, is one great eternal round. Something that goes through cycles of good and bad in a resounding rhythm that keeps the world spinning. Something that has the ability to bring the best out of anyone it touches and inspire them to do more for those around them. Something that enhances every other emotion and cuts to the very core of the human heart. Love is something that we should all look to find and harvest in our own lives for it is indeed the beginning and the end of human existence. Love is the fuel of life.
