This 4 letter word is the devil. It’s the source of happy beginnings and bitter endings. It’s what causes us to do things that we would have not done before for another person, but at the same time, this same emotion that we feel can bring out the absolute best & the absolute worst in us. It’s a damn shame that it can control our actions in such an extensive way, but we’re human, we have emotions, and it’s what separates us from being robots.

I’m not an expert on love, nor do I ever wish to be one, because quite frankly, it’s too much work for me. It requires being able to read people and understand just as to why people commit such acts for certain people when they are feeling the way that they do. The emotion overpowers them and it’s as if it’s an emotional high that has them lifted into an area that is far beyond the reach of others. You have to really be in love to explain the feeling. There’s a difference between loving and being IN love, and I’ll do what I can to try to justify this as best as I can

Loving is essentially having a strong emotional connection towards something, but not so deep that it completely overshadows every other emotion. It’s not like a full 100% commitment, it’s more like in the 60s to high 70s. What I’m trying to say is that ‘loving’ is more of a short-term feeling whereas being in love is longer. Example. When people say “Oh my God, I’m loving this,” it’s describing the feeling as in the present and that can wear away quicker as opposed to being in love.

Being in love is like going the whole nine yards, throwing the Hail Mary of all emotions in the endzone hoping that it will be caught by that certain someone. It’s like an all in bet in Poker, straight face and all. You’re taking your chances, but if you’re confident about the decision you’re making, then you can’t lose, right? Well…not always the case, because the love can die, but it withers its way down over a longer period of time (like I said, I’m not an expert on this, so don’t quote me 100%), if it indeed does get to that point, which obviously we don’t wish for, but sometimes, things happen.

The problem with love in today’s society, is that it’s being tossed around like a cheap verb or noun in everyday conversation, and you have all of these young people screaming out how they’re in love, but they have the slightest idea of what it is. He took your virginity, all of a sudden you’re in love? You had that first kiss or that first long conversation on the phone, and all of a sudden you’re in love? How does that make sense? You really have to go into the depths of history to really discover what love is.

Love is when Aminata from The Book of Negroes waited all of those long years for her husband (I forgot his name, I know it starts with a C, but I’m too lazy to get my book to flip through) to return without having any sort of emotional attachment towards any other man during the time being.

Love is Romeo & Juliet, when they went against their family’s hostility towards each other to come together and literally love each other if it killed them. He took the poison, she took the dagger (Don’t act like you didn’t know this).

Love is Corey & Topanga, all of those years when Topanga was a weird gypsy and she danced in Corey’s kitchen and drew a heart over her face, or when Topanga moved away to Pittsburgh and Corey stood outside of his house all of those long hours hoping that she would return to him. THAT is love. It’s deeper than just a conversation, it’s deeper than a sexual encounter. There’s so much behind it that people are missing.

I blame Hollywood for the abuse of love. People are so love-struck by all of these couples and how they want a relationship like theirs, as if the couples themselves are trying to be role models for the public. No one knows what happens behind closed doors (oh wait, yes we do, TMZ does exist), so they spent endless amounts of hours watching their every move, but when something bad happens like a break up, they’re all devastated. I’m not going to sit here and act like I haven’t been surprised to see some splits, because we are humans and we want to see others do well, I get that, but we need to be realistic, not all of us are going to have the same relationships as celebrities. They have more money, they have more things than us regular folks, but the love that they have for their significant other is something that regular people want. Not me. I want the kind of love my Grandparents had when they were young and starting families, the love that I see in regular people who have continuously proved that it’s a struggle, but with the sheer determination to make things work between them, love is the common similarity.

Love for a person is different from having love for an object, love for a career, love for a pet (pets are not people, don’t piss me off), but the term all falls into the same category as being that emotion that we get when our passion gets lifted by tenfold, and it thus emphasizes our actions towards it (or them, if we’re talking about people).

“Love is old, Love is new, Love is all, Love is you”

It helps that I’m listening the The Beatles as I write this, because they know what’s up. Music has been the main media outlet aside from TV and film to express the meaning of love to the general audience. It can trigger good and/or bad memories in an instant, so that’s why love is such a powerful emotion to control, because we don’t know when it can come into play.

Love. The word is more complex than the simplicity of the writing. All we can do as people, is try to understand its full meaning, or use the word to our full potential.

That’s My Word & It STiXX