Tonight, a group of people were discussing the issue of what it means to love someone or be in love with someone. The debate was which one was more important. It seems to me that just simply loving someone is definitely the better choice.
If you are capable of falling IN love with someone, then it is also possible to fall OUT of love with that person. So, why even bother worrying about being in love? Why not just love someone and be done with it? When you factor in the possibility of being in love then you invite the inevitable downfall of one day being out of love with said person. From my understanding, to love someone is to forget your own ego and to feel what you feel for them without expecting any reciprocation. As Emerson said, "To love is to be unselfish in every aspect of the way." Or something like that.
While being in love with someone may bring that silly giddiness, to truly love someone has greater rewards. To be able to put someone else before your own needs without knowing if you'll get the same in return seems much more honorable to me. We cannot choose who our hearts decide to love but I think we can choose who we fall in love with. Every single person has a brain which can reason whether or not we should care about certain people. Love isn't this uncontrollable thing that happens. We choose who we spend our time with and we can determine from that who is worth a piece of our hearts. Too often, we get ahead of our own hearts by "falling" for someone and usually falling too fast for the wrong reasons. Love takes time to develop. When people say they have fallen in love, I'd wager they have fallen into something but it ain't love. Not yet anyway.
-ldw
[Writer's note: I wrote this last month & didn't post it because I thought it needed more. After re-reading it tonight, I'm going with the original. I hope you like it.]
