What is Love? Baby Don't Hurt Me....

"Human beings have been trying for centuries, and we still have failed to rationalize or understand love. It’s never served us to set our hearts and minds up for battle against each other. By always trying to intellectualize love instead of just feeling it, we have built all this hype and pressure around one of the sweetest human actions: saying what you’re doing anyway. You are loving. There’s no need to feed your fears."

I have been working on this post for quite some time, because honestly I have no idea how to approach it. But this quote from a Clutch Magazine article hit a nerve for me. After all that I've been through this semester I must say I've been thinking about the topic of love quite often. And not just romantic love but the love you give you're family and the love you give your friends. For some people saying I love you is the hardest thing in the world. And for others it's so easy, that they toss it out like pennies. But is verbally expressing love really that important if you express it in your actions? Does spewing out the phrase really mean that much if you never even show it?

And how much love do you know to give others? What are the conditions of love and should they even exist? How do you know when someone is deserving, worth the time and effort and all of yourself that goes into loving someone? Because I truly believe that loving someone entails giving them a part of you, that you can possibly never get back.

And as much effort as we put into trying to find someone we deem worthy of our love, how do we know we are deserving of the love that someone is trying to give us? As hard as it is to give love, it can be equally as hard to receive it...

I know I'm doing exactly what the quote says we do but should, try to intellectualize love. But I don't understand how you cannot put some thought into it. Yes, love is an action. But it's also a decision, a judgement, an admission of so many things. It makes you vulnerable, even as the ability to love makes you strong. For me it's all conditional, to the person, time, place, and who I am at the moment they step into my life.

And unlike India Arie I never could quite claim I was ready for love. There are too many uncertainties, too many vulnerabilities. And I'm not trusting enough in my nature. No, I know I am not ready, but that doesn't stop me from contemplating it....