We are surrounded by the idea of love. We watch films, read books, see plays, poetry and greeting cards that all put this four letter word on a pedestal. But what does it actually mean? What does it mean to be in love and how do you know when you are, or whether you are simply in love with the idea of love? It's sad but true that we create an idea of the people around us and when they defy it, it questions whether they're right for us in the first place.
We are surrounded by fairy tales and romantic comedies which share no similarities with reality; they are fiction. We know this and yet for some unbeknown reason we convince ourselves that this is what we are looking for and we won't settle for less in the hope one day that moment will come. That brief eye contact in a movie where the characters know there and then that that is the person they will spend the rest of their lives with. How? How is that even slightly possible? I think attraction and lust can be at first sight, but love means a fundamental understanding and appreciation of another person. Loving everything about them, from appearance, to their faults and imperfections that altogether make their personality. Being in love is being in awe of their every detail and accepting that for the rest of your life you will be falling in love with a different person every day because we are always changing. 'Love at first sight', is falling in love with an appearance; with the idea of someone and not the person for who they are because you haven't got to know them yet. They could turn out to be the most horrible person you've ever known and would you still be in love with them? No. I understand you can have a connection with someone straight from meeting them, but that's not love.
This may be a morbid opinion to have but it's reality. The word love is thrown around so easily nowadays and it's the one word that hurts people more than imaginable. It's not just a word it's a promise of acceptance for whatever is to come but it falls apart so easily nowadays that it has simply lost it's meaning. It's funny that when you're single you're opinion on love changes dramatically to when you're with someone. When someone is making you feel happy and free the love songs start to make sense. Sappy love poems and films have a new dimension of meaning. You surround yourself with things to do with love so much so that you build the situation up to so much more than it really is. You lose sense of reality because you encase yourself in your own fictional scenario. You become in love with the idea of love and the idea of the person you're with so much, that when life and reality get in the way and things don't work out it makes the fall down so much harder. You convince yourself that now you're in love you will never be lonely again and it's far from the truth. You've been living on such a high, watching your own life as if you're watching a film expecting the happily ever after because that's just what happens in fiction. But reality is not fiction, it never will be. You have the reality of bills to pay, arguments, cheating. You are exposed to the good side of love and never expect the bad, therefore it's much more heart breaking when the bad happens. When you build your expectations so high, reality will never compete and it will lead to an ultimate unhappiness. The worst part is you can't understand this at the time either. You blame yourself, the timing, then the person who supposedly broke your heart... but did they? Or ultimately do we simply break our own hearts by building our expectations unreasonably high that we can't handle it when the truth is revealed. Due to being exposed to this idea of perfect love we're always expecting more intentionally or not. It's drilled into our subconscious what love should be, therefore it's never as glamorous and it ultimately leads to disappointment.
Not always though. I'm more than aware that some people meet and just know and if that happens then so be it. You're one of the lucky ones because there are so many people with bitterness towards love because of the past. Who find it so difficult to trust again because of one time or many times where it's been broken. We live our lives in search of love because we think it is the answer to true happiness. Maybe for some people it is, but for me I know it isn't. I'm a believer that happiness comes from loving and accepting yourself. Only then can you appreciate the love you receive. Quite often people feel they don't deserve the love they receive and that's because they haven't yet accepted themselves for how great they really are. Most of us are in love with the idea of love. It's just understanding that there is a big difference between the idea and reality.
Time is the strangest concept. Who decided that as soon as it becomes dark the world has to go to sleep. Just to think the other side of the world is waking up as your head hits the pillow goodnight. It often strikes me how much importance time has in our lives. A split second can change someone's life forever. That tiny moment of the second hand of the clock moving that fraction of an inch and everything can change. To think that every second that passes we will never ever get back. We can't turn back the clock no matter how many times it's done within fiction. Every tiny action we take or word we speak in that second, has the potential to change not only our lives, but the lives of the people around us. I guess that links to the idea of fate. I can't say I definitively believe everything is predetermined, but I do believe that everything happens for a reason; even if we never find out what that reason is. It's the tiniest details that always get me when you look back on the past. You hear the stories of how couples met, and it was only by that small slither of a chance that they are together today. My parents met on an organised trip to a concert and ended up sitting next to each other on the bus. If they hadn't have sat next to each other I wouldn't be here today. It's astonishing how tiny the details of the past can be that can bring you to the point of reading this very post today. S
uch as near death experiences... we've all heard of cases where people have been seconds from death and manage to escape, right place right time and maybe without even knowing. No, I'm not talking about final destination, but you get my drift.
It's negative things too though. You know those pivotal moments of feeling like absolute crap because you have been dumped by your partner for example. Yet in months, maybe years, you look back with a different perspective and see why things didn't work, knowing it was for the best. And why is that? Because time is fundamentally a portal of change. We look back on things that happened in the past with a different perspective because we ourselves are different. Every day we change. Noticeably or not. One day we'll suddenly be 70 years old and wonder where the hell our life has gone because time is the most powerful and manipulative thing in our lives. It's the foundations of how we live without us even realising. We convince ourselves we have all the time in the world. We feel as though it's something that we control yet in reality it controls us. Think about it... we get up at a certain time, we should have lunch at a certain time, eat our tea and then go to sleep before it gets too late. We live by the hours that pass us because were always looking to the next event, the next thing we should be doing. We live in a world where everyone likes the idea of living in the moment, yet very few actually take that step and grasp every opportunity. We live day by day rather than second by second, counting down the days until Christmas or a birthday and gradually years turn into the equivalent of minutes. I've always thought time goes quickly but with technology and our ever growing awareness of it; it flies by even quicker. I can't count the number of times I'll come onto the computer and when I look at the time 2 or 3 hours have passed without me even realising, and it's scary. That's how I imagine to see my life one day when I'm older, I'm scared that one day I'll ask myself where the hell did it go?!
That's the motivation that keeps me from making a decision about life. Figuring out an answer to the famous... "What would you like to do with your life?". They mean career wise but I can never find an answer for that question other than just enjoy it. I don't want to look back one day and regret not doing more with my life, which you hear happening so often. So I decided when I arranged my travels that I am going to live. From that moment and from every moment since I've been home, I have the motivation to just make the most of life. My travels changed me and, as you may agree it's hard coming home after being away anyway, so 5 weeks away definitely had an effect on me. On my travels I didn't become a new person. I just became the person I was meant to be, who was hiding under who I was being, but not living. I have become really deep, as you may be able to tell, and changing so much then returning to somewhere that hasn't changed a bit has been difficult. I can only compare it to trying to fit a jigsaw puzzle piece into the empty space that looks right but it just won't fit. And coming back to reality is hard when you've had the best 5 weeks of your life but I'm staying positive. I've already planned a trip to Canada to visit the most amazing best friend I met while traveling, and I find that keeping my mind on my plans of future trips is keeping me from the dreaded future of trying to figure out a career path. When I say to people I'm planning to get a temporary job, save up to go traveling, then return and do the same again, they say it's ridiculous and you can't do that for the rest of your life. It's not my life long plan but its for sure a momentary one for the here and now, and all I want to know is who says I can't?! Just because I'm not taking the conventional path and going to university then finding a dead end job I'll be stuck in for life, its a big thing trying to do something individually while everyone around me is doing the same thing but I'm doing what makes me happy. Happiness is of fundamental importance when it comes to enjoying life. If doing this, even temporarily is making me happy, I'm not planning to sacrifice that for the expectations of society and other people, anytime soon.
