Our whole lives we try to define love. We are led to believe that love is some mysterious, undefinable power that transcends both life and death. Some believe it’s a word created to sell greeting cards and chocolates, others believe that it’s an overused word used to sell One Direction albums to overeager tweens. On my more cynical days, which are rare and usually follow intense “Grey’s Anatomy” marathons, I might buy into those beliefs. On almost every other day of the year, I believe that love comes in many forms, and I believe that love is a choice.
When we’re kids, we throw around the word like it’s a baseball in a backyard game with our dad. We love the world, the sky, our parents, our teachers, our stuffed animals, cartoon character-shaped macaroni and cheese and anything that moves and shakes before our eyes. When we’re teenagers we’re taught to love, but in small portions. We are taught that we don’t understand love, that we’re too young and that we don’t know what love is. But when we’re young we get hurt when we love, and we learn. When we grow older, we’re taught to love carefully, either as a preventative measure to not get hurt or to not waste time. We love less because love hurts more.
Until my emergence into the scary world of dating, I believed that love consisted of obscure, superfluous gestures and sometimes a staged musical number. Although I have lowered my expectations for the staged musical number, somehow I still hold out for the lawnmower ride with Patrick Dempsey. Cynics may scream and shout about the absence of love, but I don’t believe them. Even in an age of millennial “dating” and Tinder hookups, I still believe in the presence of love. Maybe we’ve made it harder to wade through all the distractions of life and recent technology, and maybe we’re just scared to fall in love because we’ve watched our parents fall out of it. I still believe that love exists in many forms, moves in many ways and can be found in simple moments.
There are many different forms of love, varying from familial to romantic to platonic. It’s not always found in the big romantic gestures, but it can be found in a simple “let me know when you’ve made it home safe” text. Love is phone calls with my grandmother every Tuesday. It was painted on my brother’s face when his girlfriend stayed with us during Thanksgiving Break. Love is texts from my mom and emails from my dad. It’s midnight drives belting Frank Sinatra with my “person” (thank you “Grey’s Anatomy”) and it’s late night picnics with my best friends on the beach. Love is a choice, and it’s one you have to constantly choose. Sometimes we love when we can’t, and sometimes we love when shouldn’t. We love when the timing isn’t right. We love when the other person can’t love us back. It’s messy, sometimes ugly, sometimes beautiful, strong and sometimes hurtful. The ability to love after we lost love makes the love we share stronger, although that takes time. Loving someone is one of the most bare and unprotected things a person can do.
I have felt love and I have loved, but I know I’ve never been in love. As cheesy as it sounds, I feel you must just know when it happens. It’s a gradual growth of feelings, not something that happens overnight. I have loved the idea of a guy, loved an imagined combined future, loved the idea that I could be in love with someone. I have loved bits and pieces of someone, but I didn’t know what to do with the parts I didn’t love. Choosing to love the unlovable parts is a part of the experience of love.
When it comes to how to love, I believe we should love completely like children, learn through loss of love like teenagers and remind others of our love like adults. I love my family, I love the stars, my friends, fluffy dogs, macaroni and cheese, the way the river moves, the needle scratching a record and the smell of old books. I love truthfully, wholly and I also love carefully. I know that I don’t have to wait for love, or wait to find my “one true love.” I am surrounded by love. I love many things in life, but I love myself first. Whomever I choose to love, and hopefully choose to spend my life with, will be a part of my story. He will not be the end of my story. That’s for me to decide.
Meredith loves telling stories and pretending to be Carrie Bradshaw, minus the man and comfy NYC apartment. She, however, eats enough brunch to cover all six seasons. When she's not drowning in 16th-century literature, she can be found lamenting over the bad grammar and bad boys in her middle school diary.
Find her on twitter @merewilsh or email her mwilsher@bu.edu with all your love musings or questions.
