a thesis on love

love and it's many paradox's narrated by a girl who knows very little

“He knew what she felt, and she knew that he knew.”

- E.M Forester, A Room With A View

Love is perhaps one of the most studied human emotions throughout literature, history and philosophy. Nothing quite captures our attention or holds us as closely as the idea of love and romance. The act of loving someone or something is the most human act possible, but also the most Godly act possible.

You can come at the subject of love from so many different angles. You can believe in love at first sight, or you might call that make belief. You can follow down the poets footsteps and believe that love is rooted in the soul. You can be cynical and call love a spellbinding bondage that wraps around your hands and feet to trap you.

I believe that yes, you could fall in love at first sight. I’m sorry if you think that juvenile but I can’t help it, its the romantic in me. I think that the mere image of somebody can draw you closer, that their smile can become a whirlwind that pulls you in even further. I think a whole lot can be said long before any words are given in exchange.

However, love at first sight is love without knowledge. And I also like to believe that without knowledge only very limited love can exist (if any). To love somebody is to know them, the bugs and the scars and the grey matter beneath the outer layer of skin and to accept them regardless. Love is a home where a person feels safe to exist in all their blinding hues, knowing that they can’t be judged within those four walls. Love is when ugliness can exist and you can still be called divine.

“I have always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person.”

- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

I believe that yes, there exists a person swimming out in the depths of the crowded earth that might make you feel more complete, more whole. A person that you see in such blinding sunlight, someone who identifies the very things inside you that you thought were foreign to all but you. A soulmate, if that’s what you want to call it. I believe nothing quite compares to the moment you meet a person and for some unknown reason, warmth and bubbles exist where space should. That moment where you don’t know whats happening, except that you know you have clicked into place with a person who feels like childhood, even though they are a stranger.

But I also believe that you could love anybody if you truly got to know them. Got to know the ins and outs of their crooked smile and learnt the songs they sang back in primary school. I believe love comes from knowing, knowing is intimacy. How could you memories somebody completely and not feel love towards them? Therefore maybe I don’t believe in soulmates after all. Maybe I believe love is formed not found.

I believe so many things. I believe that when I am far from a person, my thoughts conquer and make up a beautiful image of them. And that the distance, does in fact, make my stupid heart grow fonder and fonder still. But I believe absence can create confusion, and too much fondness can make a heart grow sick and tired.

I believe in that movie kind of love that we all reach out and try to behold. I want it, actually. But I also want something more real then that, more messy, more imperfect. Less cookie-cutter, because what is love if not mess?

I believe in love on all levels. I believe it glows between me and my friends, and even between me and strangers. I could love them after all, I just don’t know them yet. I believe love is what saved me, I believe in heavenly love being even more real then human love.

Perhaps, I believe too much.

"I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I’ve led a common life. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone: I have loved passionately and wholly."

- The Notebook