My Feelings About Love; A Faulty Checklist

When I first thought of love, I thought of a checklist

Mature

smart

well-balanced

perfect

November 22, 2009 I started dating my boyfriend. He is not 6”, not in love with academics, and sometimes clumsy. He loves silly phrases, and video games are one of his favorite pastimes. He has the most extreme personality of anyone I have ever met.

What I realized is that love is all about re-defining the criteria. Although he does not love academics, he is smart. He knows right from wrong, and makes good decisions. Although he can be clumsy, if I was hurt he would have no problem throwing me on his back and carrying me wherever I needed to go. His immaturity makes me laugh every time. And he would stop playing any video game to spend an hour with me. His extremities make him different. They make him unpredictable and fun. He goes above and beyond my criteria in a way that nobody else possibly could. So when I go over my checklist after six months, he meets all of my criteria. And in my eyes, although they are admittedly shielded by love, he is perfect.

This is what love does. It is so powerful that it makes one see every imperfection as another reason their lover is so perfect. Love is also the greatest opportunity to feel perfect, enlightened. It is the ability to see someone in a different light. An emotion of unconditional caring. Love is a risk, a gift that is only given access to after time, sacrifice, and desire.

Being in love is also different from loving or receiving love. To know that a family member or a friend loves me is a good feeling, just as knowing that I love my mom, my dad, my dogs, my school is a warm feeling. But to be in love with a boyfriend is different. 

         Love is such a powerful feeling that millions of artists have the desire to sing songs about it, movie writers write scripts about it, actors perform plays about it, poets rhyme verses about it. But no matter how many books are written, movies are produced, plays are enacted, songs are written, love can never truly be defined. Although people will never stop trying to put words on it, label it with actions or rhythms, it can never truly be found or felt by anything but the true, authentic emotion. What makes love so different? It can mutate. It is different in every relationship. This is the source of love’s power, the reason it makes each person who encounters it feel so special, unique. Because it has never felt exactly that way before for anyone else.