The Things We Do For Love (Or: A Word On Relationships)

Photo by Reinar Rivera

According to an infallible British comedy, love, actually, is all around. It's on television and in cheap restaurants. It's in backseats and public parks. It's in music and online, in hearts and minds alike. Love is more than just a universal craving. It's an ideal and a feeling that we're all born with, whether we like it or not. And even if we can't find it in ourselves to love, love will find us with it's TV ads and ten-story billboards. Love bombards us and knocks us off our feet, and whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of personal perspective.

In a world of fleeting relationships, connections and disconnections from everyday people, love seems monotonous. But what about when you find something that breaks that daisy-chain of the everyday and mundane? What happens when love becomes spectacular again? Should it be celebrated with a grandeur so exquisite and divine, or should the celebrations come from the every day? And, when it comes down to it, is it ever possible to break down a love like this?

How do you know when you've found this fore-spoken bliss, and, more relevantly, how do you hang on to it? It's a fact of life that relationships deteriorate over time, just like most else on this tiny little planet, and we as humans are bound to screw up, but I think that in itself is something to be celebrated because it almost always leads to something spectacular. Love never comes when we seek it out. It's a patient beast, sleeping silently until it decides you're ready. Then, and only then, will it come to find you.

It seems like such a strange phenomena that people, us people living on the face of this tiny planet, can connect with each other in such a strong and unbreakable way. We become so close with each other, with our brethren and our lovers, our friends and those strangers who are kind enough to ask about our day, that it seems beyond strange that we're related only by species. It seems as though there is something more to this whole life thing, and that maybe it's these connections that really get us up in the morning and keep us going.

Can these connections even be knighted with the honorary title of "love" or are they simple incidents? When you think about it, love is something undefined. It is something that we can feel deep down in the depths of our bones. It's simply a feeling of euphoria. Cosmic togetherness. Happiness. But don't these little specks of coincidence and chance that fall into our lap really make us the happiest of all? When it comes down to it, I always seem to find myself bathing in a clever conversation starter or a chance meeting when the day finally comes to a close. This is what sticks with me when it's time to turn out the lights.

If all of this is really true, than it seems as though each and every day we are falling in and out of love over and over again.

Maybe love really is just a great song, or seeing your favorite car speed down the highway, or the kind of nail-polish that never chips no matter how long you wear it for. Love could easily be more than people together, one plus one, and instead could be the product of only one. Love could be a great idea, or an even better book, or something as simplistically big as discovering who you really are.

Or, more humanistically, love is waiting outside the dressing room of your girlfriend's favorite store, sitting patiently as she tries on dress after dress. Love is paying for dinner when your boyfriend has had a bad day, even though the twenty bucks in your wallet is your last. Love is patience, virtue, humility, and, if anything, simplicity. It's never giving up, always having fun, and sometimes compromising.

Love will never depart from this tiny planet so long as us humans are still walking on two legs and taking sweet gulps of air. It's as natural as life itself, the ultimate organic diet so to speak, and those who choose to embrace it find more than just peace of mind and somewhere familiar to rest their head. They find themselves. And more importantly, they find a kind of happiness that can't be paralleled by anything else.

There is something supremely spectacular about what we feel and how we act on it, and it is not to be ignored. Despite those scattered billboards and morning commercials, love is not mundane and it is never to be treated like the every day. Love is to be treasured. It's about shouting at the top of our lungs, yelling who we love, what we love, and how this is never to be forgotten. Love, even when hidden in alleyways and night-clubs, is here.

Love, actually, is all around.