Growing up, many of us begin to draw up a fantasy about finding “the one.”
In the world around us, we are influenced by the love ideals mentioned and showcased in the most dramatic tones. It’s almost like each moment of your life should be a scene right out of a romantic cuddlesome movie followed by a merry end — despite the hardships.
We fantasize the clichés until they become our version of “acceptable love.” As I grew older, I began parting from those clichés and discovering what love truly means.
I learned that love comes to us in different shapes and sizes — loving and adoring your lifelong companion, growing old with your best friend, having children, taking care of your parents, ensuring the safety and well-being of friends and family, little paw buddies, and all those infinite little things that make us who we are.
Love is around us, in everything we do and everything we are, and it doesn’t necessarily match the standards set for us as children. Love is its own journey, almost identical to the tides that rise and fall at the discretion of the moon. It’s the same way our hearts and minds take tosses and turns at the hands of those who love us.
Love comes in a variety of ways with its own struggles and journey. Sometimes it’s crazy, and the other days are a mere delight. The key is to find balance and maintain it to achieve ultimate happiness.
This means taking chances to find and discover love with your partner. When you do find it, cherish it, grow with it, and build both your character and lives together while respecting and learning more about each other. Understanding the complexities, or accepting them and loving yourself enough to leave something that only poisons your soul, will only improve things in the end.
It is about taking those chances again and again, till you find your life partner.
Noel Coward’s work “The Rattrap” beautifully explains that the real trap in a world like ours is getting attached to something, and that is the ultimate doom of a heart. In my opinion, the real rattrap is to run away from pain and love in the fear of encountering only one of them.
It’s not a risk to fall in love. It’s a risk not to.
In all honesty, love is far more superior than any dramatic tone the world has assigned to it, because it is also about giving yourself the same love you give to the ones around you.
In order to love someone else completely, we must first and foremost be in love with ourselves.
