Loving consciously.
Love, often described as feeling butterflies in the stomach, a missed heartbeat, a first sight adoration of someone, it’s true, all of these, in different phases of your life, and companionship’s’. But that’s merely about getting to like someone, being smitten by their presence. Love, however has no boundaries, it takes forms and shapes that can’t be explicitly articulated.
While romantic love has been given too much of an importance in popular culture to be shown a certain way — whether it is through physical intimacy or through rosy words, and love letters, but its another form of love — a love not bound by blood, but one that takes forms — sometimes that of parental love and discipline, sometimes that of a sibling’s pranks, sometimes that of a friend’s unconditional support, sometimes that of a lover’s kiss, a pet’s warmth, and sometimes in the sarcasm of the devil’s advocate.
So, do we really ‘fall’ in love?
Or do we love consciously?
Building a camaraderie where you adore them in their strengths and in their vulnerabilities, you accept them in the human, mortal, flawed form that they are in, is possibly what constitutes love. You don’t have unrealistic set archetype of what you want this person to be, you know what their strengths are, you celebrate those; and you know what their weaknesses are, you make them aware of those, and bring new perspectives to those, every single time but internally you’re just in peace with everything that the person brings and is. You know what their goals are, and where they lack in reaching them — you push them to bring the conviction, even by being their worst enemies, you love them enough to even let them go, if they need to, and if that’s whats best for them.
There’s a balance in being there, being vulnerable, and also being detached or non — attached at the same time.
It is when you don’t expect them to be the knight in the shining armor who solves all your problems for you, you rather want them to be there, to be someone you can count on while you are facing your problems. It’s simply not about expecting miracles with them being around, rather it is about thinking of the self, the connection of the self with another, and what that connections means, and brings — not solutions, but only pieces of the puzzle in you.
You can like someone out of the blue, but you love, only consciously. You know things can change, and will change — because people evolve and grow, sometimes apart, sometimes together. But you consciously choose to grow together in your own individual journeys. Growing together for whenever it is in time that you are together, and are meant to be so, sometimes that will be short, sometimes that will be until your last breath — but even that’s subjective to what your life has in store for you, so be there, be compassionate, and loving whenever it is that someone in your life needs it, or whenever the universe manifests a new connection.
It’s not in the heightened overwhelm, neither in the zeroth underwhelm, love is in the ‘in between’, where you’re well, you’re there, and you’re breathing.
