I Love You, Right?

It has often been said that love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.  What gets lost in that statement is that everyone's definition seems to be different.  Which I consider to be perfectly normal.  If we all had the same definition of love we would be in a world where objectivity and subjective thinking would be irrelevant because we would all see and feel the same way about love.

I don't care if you are the lonely widow or the thug running the streets we are all looking to be loved.  We want love so bad that when we think we've found the slightest piece of it we pick it up and run with it.  Even if it isn't love we will somehow find away to convince ourselves that its there so satisfy our own self conscious.  I feel I have have been guilty of this many times.  So much in fact that I have a hard time trying to decide if I have ever really been in love at all.  The reason for this is that when we exit a relationship and enter into a new one with someone else they tend to make us feel like there is no way we loved the one before them.  That we have finally found love with our new significant other and it becomes an ongoing cycle.  Each time someone new comes along we start to feel as if we didn't love the one before. 

Perhaps we are just fooling ourselves.  People like to say that we can't control our feelings.  Ok, fine let's say that piece of information is universally accepted and everyone believes that our hearts have a mind of their own.  But what about our minds?  We give the heart so much credit and completely neglect the power of our minds.  What I'm getting at is this.  Many of us can convince ourselves of anything if we put enough time, energy and thought into it.  So maybe we don't love the person we're with.  Maybe we have just convince ourselves and talked our heart into believing "Wow, I'm really in love."  I mean seriously think to yourself how many times you've said I love to a different significant other.  Now this may not apply to you and if it doesn't then God bless you.  But for many of us over the age of 21 we have maybe said "I love you" to a minimum of 2 or 3 people.  Those of you who have, think to yourself  and now looking back on it.  Did you really mean it?

I keep telling myself that I was in love with the last woman I dated and in my heart I really believe that I was and a piece of me still does love her.  I was ready to change my life and compromise all sorts of things to be with her.  But does that automatically mean I loved that person or was I ready for a change in my life and I cared a lot about her and was willing to see how things would work themselves out?  Who knows.

I'm not trying to discourage any of you from saying "I love you" because when you mean those three words there is nothing more beautiful.  But what I do encourage you to do is before saying them make sure its not your mind trying to convince your heart that you're in love.  There is no clear cut definition of the word "Love."  I'm not even sure what Webster says the definition is and I don't even care to look.  As far as I'm concerned it should say Love- (insert your definition here).

At the end of the day we are capable of being loved and all capable of loving.  But it is up to us to decide what our love is and how we are going to choose to display it.  I know its tough but don't let anyone tell you he or she doesn't love you because they wouldn't do this or that.  No, you wouldn't do this or that if you loved them but you're not with that person. 

In closing, I would like to tell you all if you're going to love then love hard because love isn't something just lying around at your everyday grocery store.  It is out there somewhere and its NOT your job to find it.  It will find you and when it does it is your job to cherish and take care of it.

1Love
Mr. Avant