Everlasting Love

Love: A word that is and has always been unexplainable by the human vocabulary, no matter what language you speak. For centuries, mankind has tried and failed to define the word time and time again to no avail. So many questions, so many doubts, and so many uncertainties have been raised when it comes to love. Adam and Eve, Romeo and Juliet: stories of people who come together under impossible circumstances for those that they love, not taking “no” as an answer when faced with tribulations that would so easily be taken for granted today.

What makes up the true meaning of the word? What truly defines what love is made of? What is it about us, as humans, that feel the longing desire to love and to be loved by someone else? What is it about our beings and our souls that connect to others, to make ourselves so vulnerable to someone and become infatuated with everything about them? What has happened to the meanings of love and passion as time has passed: all questions that may never be answered and rightfully so since the true meaning of love is, itself, a mystery. What happened to the times when a guy would ride for days on horseback to court the woman he loved or the times when true love was as common as today’s divorce rates? Times have changed and centuries have passed yet we are no closer to defining the true definition of the word. When God created man did he put something in our souls that would prepare us to overcome the violence that he knew would some day come? Love? The ability to sympathize, to care, a “soft spot” in our soul that would overcome all evil. Whatever His intentions, I’m sure he knew that that feeling would become a part of us that we would never be able to explain, no matter how technologically advanced we became as a species.

We go our entire lives searching, hoping that perhaps some day someone will sweep us off our feet and catch us when we fall into love. Meeting someone so unexpectedly that when we go to sleep that night we feel as if we are a completely different person that when we woke that very same morning. It is in our nature to “go with the grain” and follow the social norms set by society, yet we sometimes forget just how important it is to love someone and to be loved back. At what point in history did we decide that it was ok to settle? Perhaps when King Henry VIII set the standards for divorce? We may never know. We can only rekindle our connection with true of meaning of love, whatever that meaning may be.

Love is such a powerful feeling when it first forms as a result of a strong connection with someone. But why does it fade? Why is it so hard to put the words “love” and “everlasting” in the same sentence? Why do we become so infatuated with what makes a person tick only to grow apart from them as time passes. Is love really everlasting? I truly believe that it can be if the circumstances are right and we are willing to take leap of faith on someone.

I can’t define the meaning of love from someone else’s perspective; however, I can try to explain it from my own. What I do know about love is that it is, in fact, a very fragile and sensitive emotion that is not formed from any physical part of our bodies or from pleasures of the flesh. It opens us up to vulnerabilities and heartbreak, it turns us against everything that we instinctively do to stay strong in this violent, cruel and love absent world that we live in. It’s a very scary place, our world today. We love those closest to us as family in a completely different way since those that we grow up with are often times always going to be there no matter what. This doesn’t hold true to someone we meet at a park, at a grocery store, or at a wedding under completely unexpected circumstances. People we meet randomly come and go and change like the seasons. It would be natural in the world that we live in to keep our guard up and to be cautious with our hearts, with our love. Especially since people in today’s society take such a precious thing for granted. When you fall head over heels in love with someone and open yourself to the possibility of being hurt, why let it fade? Is it in our promiscuous nature that we allow ourselves to fall out of love just as easily as we fall into it? In the times of technology, dating websites, Internet porn, prostitution, violence and hate, I can see why love has become such a rarity among people.

Sure, there may be times when we think we have fallen in love when, in reality, we have only tip toed through it. We may wake up one day and realize that we aren’t as in love as we thought we were. It happens, but its all too common. We may love and lose, but time will go on and we will be ok. We learn from the pain and we look at our scars to remind of where we come from and where we’ve been. Its up to us not to make the same mistake twice. When your heart is covered in scars its not as tender and sensitive as it once was. It becomes tough like scar tissue, hard to break and hard to penetrate. The mistakes we make, unfortunately, stay with us forever, hanging over our heads like a rain cloud, reminding us of why we shouldn’t fall in love so easily or being afraid that the person that we were meant to love is only a figment of our imaginations that we only hear about through generations of hopeful stories.

We may never be able to define the true meaning of everlasting love, but its out there, somewhere. It may be like looking up at the night sky and trying to find a star that we cant even see with our naked eye, but its up to us to find it and up to fate to let it find us. We shouldn’t let the things that we cant control overcome us. We can only hope that we are found by that special person that isn’t afraid to take a risk, that isn’t afraid to make themselves vulnerable to someone that they love. But if it happens, if we are found, we should never take advantage and we should never let it fade. Its up to us to keep the flame burning even when the winds of our society try to extinguish it.