CLUELESS THOUGHTS ABOUT LOVE

An article contributed by SARAH JANE DE MESA  from New Era University, Quezon City. (You, too, can have your articles published here. Send them through e-mail to OurHappySchool@yahoo.com.)

I FEEL LIKE posting. This is another of my "love-related blogs" and to clear up further  misunderstandings, I am NOT and ABSOLUTELY NOT in love.

Well in the process maybe. I am merely influenced by the materials I have been reading and watching. I just wanted to blog about it. You know the feeling after you watch or read a love-related piece you are at times left wondering about stuff like "What is love?" or "Would it really hurt so much?" or "How much do we have to give just to get what we deserve?" And so I came to love.

Related to this fascination for love is my attraction to all things serendipitous and kind --strangers doing nice things for one another, random acts of kindness, people doing deeds of charity, philanthropy or just plain goodwill or grace without giving it a second thought. People who extend a hand of friendship for no reason than just to do it, though it sounds cheesy but admit it you are sometimes moved when you see real kindness in action. I love the idea of being able to find love in unexpected places. I love the idea that love is, indeed, all around us, we just need to open our eyes and look. It's right there. It's always right there.

"Love is merely madness..." (William Shakespeare)

Well, Shakespeare must be right with that. I remember a friend saying "love is irrational" and my cousin saying "love is self-destructive" and yet I find a lot of people falling in love... People in love are really insane because they choose to love even if they have to put a hell lot of efforts, time, affection, money and a lot of things to go with that.

I've also heard that love ends (I've been counseling friends and loved ones who tell me of such cases). But if it was really love to begin with, is that possible? Isn't love supposed to be something that lasts a lifetime? Isn't the whole term "love ends" an oxymoron? Love is infinite. Endings are just endings. Journeys end in lovers meeting.

But people tell me that they've stopped loving someone. That they fell out of love. Could it possibly be that it wasn't love at all to begin with then? Of course that in itself sounds ridiculous too. Have we all ever truly been in love with just one person our entire lives? Or have we mistaken other lesser things for love? When someone breaks your heart, does it mean that you stop loving them or do you hurt so much because of the very fact that you love them still? The fact that you don't have it in your power to stop loving that person, isn't that what kills you?

You don't look at someone one day and say "I'm going to fall in love with this person". It just happens. It's absolutely out of your control. All you can control is what you do, or don't do about that  wonderfully excruciating feeling that creeps up on you secretly and lets you know way too late to push it away. So if we have no control over the beginnings of love, how can we control the end  of it, when it's clearly stated in every holy book, every piece of poetry on the topic, almost every song that it cannot never end.

Does love end? Can it? Or if it does then is it a lesser version of love? Was it love at all? Or do we grow up to the new age concept of love that allows you to love one completely and then move to love someone else the same way? Marriages made in heaven have ended in hell and the couples have moved on to love and even marry again. They were in love before. They are in love again. Or they have always been on a euphoric high mixed with tolerance of each other for a certain period of time before the tolerance ran out? How un-romantic, but how very real.

Do I have to be resigned to this school of thought or can I please continue to believe that love is much, much more than just a feeling?