Love's Inception

Love can be present in one's good life, but the type of love we keep around is essentially up to us to interpret. It can be conditional, unconditional, brother/sisterly, or even romantically. The spectrum can go on. Therefore, we can agree that the concept of love is just as intricate as the meaning of the world itself. It can be described as the feeling we feel (excuse the redundancy) when we genuinely care for someone, or partake in an activity that we feel strongly passionate about. We can "love" just about anyone or anything, but just how much control do we have over who or what we love? Often in my humanities class, we tend to allude to the concept of freedom versus freewill, and a majority of us agree that our good lives is the product of the decisions we make each and every second we are alive. However, many of us contemplated whether or not "love" is something we actually have control over. After discussing the different degrees of love, some that I mentioned earlier, we attempted to define it. But I admit that at some point, it did feel as if we were going around in circles trying to establish a concrete definition. Half of the class described it as a natural occurring emotion we cannot help but feel. Others described it as an emotion that can be controlled or guided--a conscious decision we make in other words. I was actually part of the group that perceived love as a complicated emotion we have no power over. Regardless of how much we try to dismiss the feeling, it is not something that can just disappear whenever we tell it to. If love were to be that simple, then there would be no heartbreak, or bitterness towards those who hurt us. Perhaps no love at all because it would mean not having to deal with the emotional baggage as a result of love not working out in our favor. This does not mean that love is chaotic, though. Being human means having to deal with certain parts of us that we are not too fond of, and that includes the way we feel in certain situations. No, really. Ask yourself: "Have I been in a situation where I wished I did not feel a certain way because I felt silly or irrational? Because I felt it was pointless?" More than likely, yes. We have all been there at least once in our lives. This applies to love as well. We can trick ourselves into believing that we have the ability to control how we truly feel, but the truth is, the only decision we can make is what to do with how we feel. Looking at the ability to control love within our society, I thought about how this tied into the LGBT community. Would homophobia still exist knowing that they can avoid any conflict or punishment if they could decide who they loved even when it goes against what is socially acceptable? One of the videos we had to watch for the discussion was a short film by Ellen DeGeneres. It was about a boy who yearned to confess his love for his best friend, but he was conflicted because he was afraid of the possibility that he would be judged, mistreated, or rejected by the people around him, including his best friend. Would he have put himself through it if he had the ability to be straight in the blink of an eye? No, of course not, and the reason being is as I mentioned before: Who you love is not a choice. What you do with that love is a choice. In the end, the boy figured out just what he needed to do and say. He accepted the way he felt, which to me, is the most powerful part of the short film. That moment was his self-revelation. The discussion in my humanities class ended on the usual note, either existentialistic or ambiguous (not in a negative way, of course!). In this case, it was ambiguous. Love is not as simple as Disney movies depict it to be; it is not about falling in love with everything in sight and calling it a happy ending. Yes, love may not always be a walk in the park (and this applies to all sorts of love, not just romantically), but despite that, love is very much needed. Any type of love we accept, embrace, or dismiss will always take the form of some sort of lesson—an open door to learning about what we seek to find in others and ourselves.