BEFORE LOVE CAME
Here I was thinking love was a fairytale of beauty and the beast (not quite ugly), or rather say Cinderella’s story (yeah that is beautiful).

I thought love was just as simple as it was found in the fourth edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in page 538, never knew that fate and happenstance were conspiring to prove me wrong. Not entirely though, as I never had a definition, was just living by the ones from the English dictionary.

In the days before love came, life unfolded in a predictable rhythm, like a serenading jazz music from a tenor saxophone in an empty space. The storylines were clear, and I as the single character played my roles so perfectly without veering off the course of my script. The concept of love, in its pristine, dictionary-bound form, felt like a distant dream.

My understanding of the four-lettered word (LOVE) was so clear, it seemed like a straightforward emotion, easily captured by phrases like "an intense feeling of deep affection" or "a person or thing that one loves." It was almost too easy, as if love could be summoned at will, like a character in a play entering the stage when the script called for it.

Not until I started to age and found that the word is being largely misused and interpreted in this current world which also added to my confusion and then, life had other plans.

Love arrived unannounced like the breaking of day, breaking through the preconceived notions and challenging the simplicity I had attributed to it. It wasn't a storybook romance or a scripted play; it was a complex, messy, and beautifully unpredictable journey. It arrived not in the grand gestures of fairytales but in the subtle moments that defined the everyday.

Before love came, I was a spectator to my own life, navigating its chapters with a sense of detachment. But with love, the narrative shifted, and suddenly, I was a willing participant in the unfolding story. It was not the polished version from the dictionary but a raw and unfiltered experience that defied definition.

My research finally took me deeper to find love’s full definition and how it is being expressed in “Love’s main dictionary” precisely in 1 Corinthians 13: 1-13.

So here I am, after love came, no longer bound by the constraints of a dictionary definition. Love is no longer a distant concept; it is the pulse that beats within the heart of my existence. The journey from before love to now is a story of growth, of letting go of preconceived notions, and embracing the beautiful chaos that is love.