The Signature of Love (article)

More of an essay/Article

I was a sophomore in high school the first time I fell in love. It was exciting, incomparable and unbelievably foreboding; but only because I knew I wanted to hold on to this feeling as long as possible. Love produces emotional feelings of well-being with elevated levels of Serotonin, Oxytocin and Vasopressin in our bodies, chemicals that, essentially, make us feel good and assist in increased functioning of our nervous and limbic systems; feelings that we enjoy experiencing and would strive to hold on to. Though I believe this explanation of Love to be limited, this is a scientific illustration of our feelings, a description. It is not a basis of or the meaning behind Love. 

Love creates in us a strong intent to be better, not necessarily for ourselves but in the interest of others. Therefore many have considered love the most complicated idea in existence. In actuality it is the single most straightforward and therefore basic idea there is. Love in essence is not a feeling. It is like whiteness. Love is the harmony of all feelings. It is what makes reality comprehendible and the universal attainable. Love, as we know it, tends to change as we get older. When we're younger it’s a feeling and something to revere, as we grow older it becomes a skill, something we have to practice. 

It is grounding reminding myself of what it felt like to be nervous, a really love sick nervous the developing now or never feeling that enveloped us when we were younger. It is that anxiousness that seems to generate a weight in the pit of our stomach and feeling that dictates our thoughts making it difficult for us to think about anything else.  We would use phrases like “The love of my life” then try to remember what is felt like to know what it truly means to love as opposed to just, kind of, understanding it. I believe we knew better than. 

I have learned that with this shift comes a distinction between love and this idea of love. Those feelings we experience when we are younger that many of us look back on quizzically, wondering what's happened, as we got older; Love, the love of my life feeling is in fact a love of life. As we get older age, indifference, and denial will angle that love into this idea and we’ll market it as something we are expected to obtain. As a result we begin to lose our lust for life and the unknown that we have yet to experience; those dreams and passions we’ve had and our desire to share them with another person. We let excuses and a society convince us of the idea and that lust for life begins to disappear. What we are left with is the relationship, and the relationships that last are those in which each person accepts one another. Enterprising in our similarities while influenced by our differences. And early on developing strong communication between one another, verbalizing our expectations, intentions and dreams to each other which will thereafter establish an ability to share those things that would otherwise seem difficult to express; understanding, subsequently, that Love is the act of creation itself, it is in all things. 

Love surrounds us creating an idea that is often intimidating, and difficult to personate but still we’ll never cease to try. It’s the same idea that women are expected to maintain a degree of beauty associated with perfection. A society decides how they are supposed to be and to look and provokes an image that is unappeasable; much like the ultra masculine idealism that follows young men around as they are raised to also believe an image that is predetermined by our society. Though it is seemingly much more accessible, this idea of love has been fashioned, and manipulated by song, by film and society. I don’t mean to imply that this love chronicled by music and film is falsified, it is very real, and more beautiful than any of us could possibly imagine however, we are led to believe at such an early age that we will find it, or have failed in some degree of life if we cannot maintain or accept this idea. We are made to believe that we have to find a love while also being told that you are helpless to it, and that this love will find you. The ladder is true only in that you have to give up to be open to it. 

The fact is you have never been without it, love envelopes you and always has. And to share it with another person means to acknowledge a mutual awareness of beauty and existence while willingly engaging in the unimaginable-shared opportunity to create this passion together. Water is love and we are the fish and a fish cannot exist without water. Love is unexplainable and is often unbelievable, but does a fish believe in water?

Reviews

[Elizabeth]

Does a fish believe in water? Priceless. I have always believed that real love is a choice. After the butterflies go away, and reality sets in, it is often a choice to stay and fight for your love when things get bad. You captured the true nature of love so well. I especially likes the Dane Cook reference.