Where do you find contentment? Satisfying all your FEELINGS?
Or doing what is RIGHT? Which is more important?
If you answer that correctly, then you understand what love really is.
This girl Jenna and I got into an online fight about love, and she ended our friendship over it. She's convinced that love is a feeling. I know that "like"
or "in love" is the feeling, but love is the choice you make to act on that feeling.
Love is an action, not a feeling; feeling is the incentive to love. Love
isn't that feeling; love is something you do for someone. I love you=I do this
for you…but people misuse it all the time as “like”. One might
argue: But if you do that something, the way you make them feel is love! To that I say: You make them feel good,
not love…you can't feel love…you can only do it. Incubus says it
best: “love is a verb”…love makes you feel a certain way, but
that way isn't love--that just wouldn't make sense!
Granted, love STARTS with a feeling, anyone will admit it's deeper than that. I will go on to explain why and
how in a logical manner...
Love is the most
profound ritual known to mankind. Love is an outward act unconditional and independant of an inward connection with or to
someone. I love you=out of my own free will i choose to will for you the best of myself and all things in your best interest
in disregard to an ever changing emotional interrelation.
If it is not an act chosen
freely, then its value is worth no more than the value of a response to a stimuli AKA feeling. If it's a response to a feeling,
then you are responding to satisfy that feeling. If you are satisfying your feeling you are being selfish. If you are being
selfish you are not loving. LOVE#SELFISH therefore LOVE#FEELING...
Love combines all other aspects and virtues of being
a human adult:
Patience
Self-discipline
Intellect
Mercy
Understanding
Trust
A feeling can change, but
love never changes...Love is the one unchanging thing in an everchanging world...and in the words of Boston...It's
more than a feeling. The feeling you feel is the experience that can only be known as BEING IN LOVE, not loving...love is
the bonding act you perform to show that you love that person. I love you means: I support you, I am there for you, I will
be your better half...not I feel good...that's a like...i love you doesn't depend on the way the person makes you feel...if
it did there wouldn't be any fucking love in this world. You give money to a scummy homeless guy not because he did anything
for you...you do it out of love and understanding for his situation...love comes from within yourself, not from someone else...and
it's given to another person...it's strange to think about, but love is always given and never received...if it is received
then it becomes selfish again...think about when you fight over who is gonna eat the last piece of pizza...everyone wants
to give it to someone else so it just ends up in the trash...because we know that it's selfish to take something for ourselves...so
when love is given to you, don't take it for yourself, let the other person give it to you. Can you honestly sit there and
tell me if your FEELING changes then that means you just stop loving the person...no wonder you've been hurt if that's ppl's
understanding...feelings change all the time...what makes love so strong is that it surpasses the emotion by willfully choosing
to love...learn to love...it's your CHOICE.
Sometimes the hardest part of loving someone can be the sacrifices we are forced to make. SACRIFICE encompasses all
of the choices that we make, and choosing to do what's right even though it is rarely ever easy. Think of a situation
where your critical decision can have a dire consequence in any outcome of a choice. Now how do you decide what's
the best choice? How do you decide what's the right thing to do?
The strongest love-bond that exists among humankind is the love of a parent for his/her child. What if your spouse and
your child were both trapped inside a burning building and you could only save ONE of them? Who would it be? What
would be the sacrifice of love? I would save my child. Your child from the very moment of conception depends on
you to do what's right--depending on you for more than just the physical needs of natural survival, like clothes, food and
a roof over your head. He/she has the needs of a complex human life...the need to be nurtured, the need for intellectual
and emotional attention. That child is depending on YOU to do what's right for his/her health and existence. A
life is in your hands. Do you want to be responsible for a shameful let-down? No, you will work, you will do whatever
it takes to make sure you give the child all you can. That child is a literal piece of you, who you are, that piece
that lives on after you are gone...and you will give your own life to protect that life. The child matters the
most out of all the ones you will love. Knowing that, it's easier to understand why parents are the way they are.
It's out of love, that unbreakable, go to the ends of the earth kind of love, a kind of love that would choose without hesitation
to selflessly sacrifice their own benefits so that the child is better off. Kind of like the sacrifice you would
be making in that burning building...giving up your life-long security, your intimate connection with someone you love so
much. That hard choice is a painful one. But even so, I can't fathom how anyone could save
their spouse instead of their kid. That's such a selfish choice...and love does NOT choose selfishly. Love sacrifices
to do what's right. :-)
