This is the one thing that unites all of us. No matter the race, gender, political views and so on, love conquers all.
But what exactly is love? Most commonly, love refers to a feeling of strong attraction (romantic) and emotional attachment.
According to ancient greek philosophers, there is five forms of love:
Familial love
Friendly love
Romantic love
Guest love
Divine love
Modern authors have discovered further varieties of love, but the most important one is Self- love.
Now most of you probably don't know what to imagine under 'Guest love' and 'Divine love', since these are not usually known by name to the general public. Guest love basically describes, as one can already tell by the name, the general relationship between a guest and a host. The host usually treats the guest with politeness, kindness, respect and just cares for the guest overall because it's the right thing to do. The host also often entertains the guest, even if the guest is a stranger. Divine love refers to a religious love/respect regarding god, the supernatural or just otherworldy, supreme creatures.
Self-love I was kind of hoping I wouldn't need to explain but since this is a topic that our generation seems to be struggling with, Self-love is basically accepting that you are worth it and not to deem yourself as any less than the others. However it is not to be confused with egoism, because (according to my main source of info, documentaries, and my alternative source of info, Wikipedia) Self-love does not involve pursuing one's personal interests at the expense of others.
The two main types of love are Impersonal and Interpersonal love.
Impersonal love: Love for an object, principle or goal to which you are deeply devoted.
Interpersonal love: Inter (between) personal (person) refers to love between human beings.
There is a whole psychological basis to love that's really interesting, I suggest you google it or read a book about it because if I go into it right now I would have to write a separate novel based solely on this topic.
Anyways, love is of upmost importance in our daily lives. As we move forward in this web of bad and good luck searching for our destinies, we all need someone to rely on when the way seems long and tiring, when you lose your motivation to go on and you just want to sit down and let yourself be carried away by the winds of failure. When you are down to your last drop of energy, patience, will and motivation, you think of this person. Or these people. And suddenly the path doesn't seem so glum anymore. You have a goal and you have people supporting you in order to achieve it. Isn't it beautiful? These people are loved by you. And they probably love you back.
Loving someone involves making sacrifices for that person and sometimes even putting them first. You can't be selfish when it comes to love, because love is consensual (most of the times).
You can hurt a person who loves you by hurting yourself. It's a dangerous game, which is why one must be careful. In any relationship, no matter if familial, friendly or romantic, you have to learn to accept your loved one's good and bad side. Of course, what negative character trait is the worst in a relationship and what positive trait is the best is a matter of personal opinion.
For example: Friend no. 1: "I could never date a girl/boy who isn't loyal" Friend no. 2 "Really? For me, it's not that important as long as he/she pays me a lot of attention and isn't ignorant. "
This could be interpreted the same way with not just personality traits but opinions based on your partners general views of the world
Example no. 2: Friend no.1: I could never date a republican because I'm a democrat and I just wouldn't feel very comfortable."
Friend no.2: " I mean I don't really care if we don't have the same political views as long as he/she is religious and goes to church with me every Sunday."
We all look for different things.
There's people who go more for a good personality and there's people who go for good looks. I personally am a 40/60 with those two things, because as soon as I get to know someone with a beautiful personality, the person becomes beautiful all together in my eyes. I also have my limits, like I could never date someone who's overweight, just because I personally lead a very athletic lifestyle but other than that looks are relative to me because, as I said, a beautiful personality from inside turns the person beautiful on the outside too.
Regarding familial love, it's obviously different. Most family members will love you no matter what since you are their flesh and bone and they were probably forced to spend a big part of their lives with you, so you can let yourself get away with a bit more than you would with any other person. Of course this is not always the case, sadly. The reason why you can let yourself get away with more is because your family already feels a certain responsibility to care for you and love you as soon as you are born. However, this is not at all the case with everyone else. On any other person, you have to make a good impression for them to be able to decide if they want to have you as a part of their lives or not, and they can deny you anytime since you are not their responsibility and they have no familial instinct when it comes to you, at least not at the very beginning of your relationship.
I have two older brothers. I often think about the fact that if we weren't family I probably wouldn't even know them, even though we are very close and would never try to get to know them either because of the big age-gap and gender difference. (I'm a girl if you haven't guessed yet, and I know I stated at the beginning that I wouldn't reveal much about myself but this will be a vital piece of information later in the book, so I had to.) It sometimes gets really scary thinking about all of the great people you would've missed out on if your family weren't your family. I mean, in my case it does because I have a very big family ˙(although I only have two older siblings, I have a bunch of cousins and we are all very close and love each other dearly).
At the end, love is what makes us happy. I'm happy thinking about the people I love, I'm happy if I make the people I love happy, I'm happy if the people I love are happy. I'm happy if the people I love, love me back.
And this is mostly the case at everyone.
So, take care of yourself and the ones you love surrounding you, because it's so easy to lose sight of what's important and in the blink of an eye, they're all gone. Love is powerful until you're not powerful enough.
