There has been a misconception on what Love is for several years. It is defined by mainstream society as “the butterflies” you get in your stomach when you’re with someone. Others say its feeling special by the way your loved one treats you. A lot of ifs and buts are included in the definition. But is this really love or are we simply not capable of understanding the depth of what its underlying meaning? Is love merely a frail, fleeting feeling to be forgotten tomorrow, or a mystery to be contemplated on?

     To understand love, we must realize that there are no ifs or buts. You do not love someone, if the feeling depends on how they treat you or on how you feel when you’re with them. True love fails to see common sense and reality; instead it blindly pursues what could in fact be detrimental for one’s own well being. Real love is self-sacrificing. It is being truly vulnerable for that one person, who has taken your breathe away. Love is putting someone else’s needs above your own, to be willing to die for someone without a single moment of hesitation. Essentially, to love is to suffer and become truly human. Too many mistake love with an aimless infatuation based on self actualization. Fools love is fleeting and will soon rust, but what is truly genuine will endure the weathering of time.

     Love completes us in a way that no other thing can. We go about our lives in autopilot, trying to find that other part that completes us. Once we find that person who makes us whole, we never want to feel incomplete again. But when looking for love we must not make wrong decisions that will harm us. They say love is blind and so it is all right to make mistakes. But the truth is another: love is not blind; it chooses to see what it wants to see, and there is a difference.

     Love can be the greatest of things, but it can also bring any man to his knees, begging for mercy that will never come.