LOVE: THE TOPIC OF LOVE ONCE AGAIN

Love is a feeling, an emotion and an experience, but most of all, love is a choice.

Why is it I feel qualified to talk about such a complicated and difficult subject? Because I have seen both sides of it, love is beautiful and horrible and I know this from experience. I have floated high above a world where everything was right and everyone was great and every day was a new day to be discovered. I have felt the devastation of having that world fall to pieces before me as I struggled to comprehend how a person I trusted and admired could suddenly turn mean and hateful. I felt there was nothing I couldn't do, in an instant it all changed, and I felt completely worthless.

Love at first sight does not exist. You can certainly be attracted to someone the first time you meet them but that is lust at first sight, not love. Love takes time. Love is something that grows. It happens when two people experience the highs and lows that life always seems to find some way to throw at us, and as a result, they form a bond.

Love happens when you can always count on another person to try and help you, even if you don't know what you need. Love happens when you trust someone with everything you have. Love happens when you care for someone so much, that you would rather be hurt yourself than have them suffer for a moment. Love happens when another person lets you see all sides of them, the good and the bad, and rather than judge them, you accept them.

Certainly you have to like someone before you love them, and you have to get along with them before you like them, and you have to be attracted to them on some level so that you spend time with them before you know if you get along with them. There are many steps that must come before love and lucky for us a lot of people get weeded out during these step, otherwise it would be even harder to define this thing called love. But at some point, a choice has to be made.

Some people say that when you are in love "you'll just know." I'm sorry, but I think whoever said that is full of it. You'll know you are in love when you choose to allow yourself to love someone. I know there are probably a lot of people out there who disagree with me, but I'll hold to my belief. Chemistry and compatibility can only take you so far, at some point you have to decide.

I can hear the outcry now "But Alex! That sounds so very unromantic! Surely you don't mean it! How can we decide to love someone?" Simple. Love is hard. Any deep, meaningful relationship is hard. If it were easy, we'd be best friends with everyone! Take a look at the relationships you have with the people who mean the most to you, the people you love, they might be best friends, family members or a boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife. Has the relationship always been easy? Do you always get along and agree on everything? No, you have to work on it, you have to try. You have to decide that this relationship is important enough that even when things are going badly, you're not going to give up, you'll make it work. The tough part is that since a relationship involves 2 people, both people have to decide they want it to work to make it successful.

I think a lot of problems today can be attributed to people having unrealistic expectations about love. People expect everything to always be happy and good, they expect love to be easy, they expect they won't have to make a choice. But if you don't make the choice, who will? Fate, chance or whatever you want to call it may bring people together, but it is up to those people to decide where to go from there.

Love can not be measured, except in our own minds, as we are the only ones who know the degree of love we feel for someone, although poems and songs do an admirable job, love is something that can never fully be described in words. Some people may wake up one morning and realize how much this person means to them "Wow! I'm in love!" while for others it may be a gradual realization "You know, she means so much to me... I think I love her."

Love lifts us up where we belong, where eagles fly, on a mountain high Love makes us act like we are fools, throw our lives away, for one happy day We could be heroes