Quest for love

Growing up l have always loved the idea of love, two people walking down the street always fascinated me, I won’t even mention Romcoms (Romantic comedies) those are still my favourite even though as l have gotten older they have become a little bit more predictable. All this goes to show how much l just love LOVE (if such a thing exists).

Lately l have been on this quest to understand the deeper meaning of love particularly the romantic kind of love. I particularly enjoy listening to different people elaborate on their love journeys and how they view love and what has kept them together for however long they have been together and in my quest it has been made clear that people view and interpret love differently although there are common similarities.

My favourite talk show host of the red table talk Jada Pinkett Smith defines love as a verb(a doing word),she says it is not enough to tell someone you love them but rather it is important to show them the love what she terms acts of love. She takes it a step further to say that men equate love to providing and giving you material things however still not showing you affection and other elements that come with showing your partner love. I would like to think as much love is a verb however there are some elements added to it like the bible says love is kind ,love is patient and all these are elements that go together to show one love.

One Pastor on Oprah explains love in a way which left me with a different revelation of how love is defined. He begins by saying love is redemptive, sacrificial and unconditional, furthermore he gives an example of him and his wife about how they had a list of reasons of why they love each other which he later discovered that when you have reasons to love someone, you have conditions to love someone. What happens when the reasons are no longer there? The part that gave me a new perspective is when he said today he loves his wife for no reason and that is unconditional love. I had never heard anyone explain unconditional love the way he did. Whether you agree with him or not it makes you wonder if you have unconditional love for your partner.

As l continued with my quest l came across a very interesting post where the writer describes how people evolve in a relationship and true love is evolving with the person and going through the many phases of life with them however painful some of these phases may be. In order for a relationship to last, you really have to flow with a person as they change, give them space and love them fully. The quote goes on to speak about an old man who had been married for 60years (before wife passed away) and he said the secret was allowing his wife to be who she really was without suffocating her or expecting her to be what she was not and in those 60years he says it was as if he had been married to eight different women. A lot of times our expectations put too much pressure on our partners to be what they are not. We live in society with so many expectations that we impose on our partners’ weather consciously or sub consciously and that l think is destroying the beauty of expressing love to one another.

In a recent interview Usher (yes girls THE USHER.. .my ex in my head) he defines love as sacrifice, pain, patience, sharing, honesty, integral, un wavering.

I must say l agree with parts of definition of what usher was saying sometimes loving someone is not easy, it requires a lot emotionally.

In conclusion love is one of the greatest emotions ever given to human beings to express what is deep within them, sometimes they get it right and sometimes they fall flat on their faces trying to express love or show love.

I will leave you with this simple quote to mediate on “You always gain love by giving love”