What is Love?
Tricky question that all of us encounter probably all through our lives. Maybe love is a baby feeling its mothers warmth? Or a child bumping into their first love? Or a man driving a beautiful girl home? Or someone as old as Jakarta itself sitting next to a gravestone?
Love is abstract. Love is everything that a person feels. There is no right or wrong in love but there is healthy and unhealthy love.
So, what exactly is love to me?
Definition of Love
First things first, lets understand love from by definition from several of dictionaries.
Love; to like another adult very much and be romantically and sexually attracted to them, or to have strong feelings of liking a friend or person in your family (Cambridge Dictionary)
Love according to Merriam Webster there are lots of meanings of love:
Healthy Love
There is such thing as experiencing healthy love. Healthy love is when someone communicates nicely on what they feel and try to find common ground. Healthy love is to try to understand and tolerating others. Being yourself and not afraid to critique and be criticized by others.
Unhealthy Love
Practically the opposite of healthy love. It makes you feel unwanted, not worthy, you start questioning yourself, feel tired, and so on. All those negative emotions that you feel that hurts who you are is a sign of an unhealthy love. If you tried to communicate it nicely, when you and whoever it is are fully in their mind with no emotions, but didn't succeed then maybe its time to question yourself if you want that person to be in your life.
I think everyone has experienced in both of these. Receiving or giving healthy love, and even receiving or giving unhealthy love. Not everyone is clean of mistakes, everyone hurts and everyone hurts (if you know what I mean.)
My Love Journey
Over these past few years, in everything that I have experienced so far, personally has made 'love' have a different meaning. At some point I am that hopeless romantic girl that wishes to have a perfect love story at school or at childhood to then get married to them, grow old and happy with them.
At other times, I am that girl who just wants someone by my side, not caring about how I want the others to be, pleasing them to make them stay. Or at other times I wish that they could understand me more.
But when I come to think of it, I guess all of us are still hopeless romantics in some way, we all have a concept of how we want our partner to be and how we would like to live with them. We can never deny that fact. Through my love journey I come to realize that that hopeless romantic concept that you have is kind of a healthy and unhealthy thing at the same time.
There's nothing wrong with choosing a partner, you actually need to choose a partner that has the same value and vision for life, but it becomes a problem when you hope to change your partner in any aspect when they aren't willing to.
My love journey has really been one of the biggest problems in my life. Starting with a family that has no emotional intimacy and understanding, then losing all my best friends that I dear the most in my life, then there's always that about partners. Losing them, heartbreaks, wishing everything was different, or wondering how I could make them stay to share the beauty of love and loyalty with me, has really drained my soul out of me. Like a small wound that grows bit by bit accumulating to a trauma and to something that despised love.
I hurt people and they hurt me too.
The thing about love is that with all these emotion and desires that brings joy to your life comes a price of getting hurt and all that negative stuff. You can't have a sunny day without rain. I never accepted that, I was so tired and afraid of getting hurt or that I might hurt others too.
But some time this year, I've really come to accept the fact that you can't have love unless you love. I've always been someone who cherished love and glorified love, maybe too much till I thought that was a curse that hurts me and others, but I come to accept it and all the consequences of love itself.
I come to accept that there are healthy ways to love and that to gain genuine love is to never have to be afraid of loving people that deserves to be loved sincerely.
What about unconditional love?
I do believe that there is such a thing to unconditional love, maybe I still feel it till this day. You know the thing about love is that you never stopped loving someone, it just evolves. My love for my ex best friends are never gone even after they have left me, my love for them is to pray their happiness and to be a great friend when they reach out. My love for my exes are never gone too, no matter how much I hate them, I love to wish that they become a better person and attain true peace.
Unconditional love is also to love for things, your love for your car that has been from thick to thin, the love for your favorite pen and the love for a poet that moved your heart.
I've learnt that to deal with unconditional love with someone is to know your limits, to know what they deserve from you, to know what will hurt you if you go extra lengths for a personal that doesn't feel the same. Knowing your limits could help you channel your love for them and still knowing your worth that your love and loyalty deserves more than them.
Unconditional love takes a lot of courage to be genuine and sincere. Know your limits of your own sincerity and know what they deserve from you. Everything will be fine, you won't get hurt and they won't too.
My Definition of Love
After all that recap about love, we finally come to the conclusion. Well, to be practically honest with you, the meaning of love for myself is still being constructed. I'm starting to believe that love is what I build with love ones or probably what I built for myself.
After going through heartbreaks and loss, I have come to learn that to love someone is to love yourself first. There is no such thing as your 'other half', 'significant other', or 'the one.' Love is when you find yourself loving life and who you are as a human being, that love that you have will be so big that you have to give to others. Find someone that has come to love themselves too, then build the love that you both desire.
Building love is not finding the one who matches you, you will never be able to find the one who is a perfect match. Never. They only exist in fairy tales. Even family fight, even best friends fight, moreover partners.
Love is finding someone that wants to build the communication, tolerance, and understanding that you have to each other. Its not giving up and trying the best you can to be a better person and helping them to be a better person. Love is when you are truly capable of taking care of yourself and others.
But love is also when you trust that God will take care of you and better plans laid out. Love is also when you want to do things as God told you to do and learn that its for the sake of yourself. Love is loving all of Gods creation, human or things.
All of those definition are not finished, I still have a quarter and a half life time more to construct the meaning of my love; and I'm going to give it all my all, no regrets.
