That little feeling you get when you make eye contact… you know

Love.

What is it?

How does someone actually come to know what love is? Is it the feeling you get when you get your first kiss with that girl you’ve been crushing on for a month or two. Is it the feeling of seeing your mom after a long day and getting a warm hug from her? Is it when your dog or cat jumps up into your arms when you finally see them again? Is it hanging out with a friend all day and giving them a hug goodbye? Is it getting married to a girl you say you love and she says she loves you?

Yes.

All those things are love. Love comes in so many forms. Whether it’s romantic or intimate or platonic or friendly. Love is love. When parents tell their kids that they don’t know what love is, I laugh. How can someone tell someone else that they don’t really know what their heart is telling them. Love is what we all know it to be at that moment in time. A 6 year old loves his dog and smiles bright when the dog sees him and gives him kisses. True love. A 15 year old says she loves her boyfriend as she gazes into his eyes and he says it back. True love. Why is true love so hard to come by. I think we have all felt it. True love means you love something truly. So if I’m not feeling what you might call true love then is what I’m feeling fake? No. It isn’t. Sure there are things that you might just like or appreciate and not love. But the moment it makes you the happiest you’ve been all day or all week. When seeing that someone or something makes you feel happiness and joy and makes you smile more than ever. That is true love.

Being in love is something so special and so fragile that it needs to be appreciated. Love nowadays has been battered, bruised, and destroyed so many times that people think love comes from sex and sexual moments with others. I feel bad for those who have given their heart to others and have watched that very person they trusted so much throw it away and walk on it. Those are the murderers of love.

Thus comes the harsh reality of the pain of love. Not being in love but the side affects. Love is a war. Love comes with pain and worry and heartache. Not heartbreak but heartache. There’s a difference. Seeing the person you’re in love with hanging out with her girlfriends and being jealous because you wish you were there with her and they weren’t with them. This is where the maturity to acknowledge that that person has their own life before yours. To love is to respect. To love is to trust.

To receive love you must love first. To receive trust you must trust first. To receive change you must change first.

Be happy, love often, and forgive those who hurt you. Our generation must be the generation that revives love and restores it to what it should be. My biggest fear is that the true meaning of love will be lost forever.