Love is the best teacher. From it, you will learn more than
you could possibly ever learn in a classroom or from a book. The reason
for this is rather simple — we feel more when we’re in love.
Human beings learn through their senses as well as through the way
they process and interpret the information taken in by those senses.
When we find ourselves in love, the chemicals released by our brains
paired with the emotional sensations we experience allow us to
experience life in hyperdrive. We feel more alive and take in more of
the world around us.
Being in love is the greatest high on the planet. It’s the most
natural of highs, as it’s produced by our own bodies, as well as being
the longest lasting high on the planet.
It increases our senses and allows us to both take in more information and process that information under a more positive light.
Our imaginations tend to get the best of us when we’re in love,
creating alternative realities where our fantasies are born. Love helps
us both focus more on the world around us while basically forcing us to
spend more time in our own heads.
Until you fall in love, you don’t know what it means to live. Well,
to be more exact, until you fall in love and have your heart broken, you
don’t know what it means to live. Furthermore, until you have your
heart broken, you won’t understand what it means to truly love.
As human beings, we learn best from loss. We come to understand the
importance and value of both people and things, by losing them.
Sure, we can imagine how it must feel to lose a person we love, but
until we actually lose, or are at risk of losing, this person, we never
fully understand how important he or she is to us.
We learn by losing. We learn when we are beaten by others, when our
best efforts aren’t good enough, when we don’t make the cut, and when we
fail. Success is no teacher. In fact, success can often do more harm
than good — especially when it wasn’t worked for or earned.
But loss… when you lose something, you instantly become aware of the
now vacant space in your life that was once filled with something
beautiful — even if that something beautiful was only the dream of
having that which you now know you won’t have. And it hurts.
Love can teach you just about everything you need to know about life.
For example, it can teach you that sometimes no matter how much you
love a person, that person simply won’t love you back.
It can teach you that there are many levels to loving and that each
and every person loves a little differently. It can also teach you that
sometimes you have no choice but to love someone who will never love you
as much as you love him or her.
We often talk about unconditional love, as if it were a real thing.
The truth is that there is no such thing as unconditional love; we all
love conditionally. However, having someone love you back is not one of
those necessary conditions.
In fact, we often fall in love and continue to love those who don’t
love us back as passionately. We all love that which we can’t have, and
if we find someone that doesn’t want us it only makes us more desperate
to have that someone.
That’s a bitch, ain’t it? You fall in love with someone who doesn’t
love you back and knowing he or she is trying to push you away only
makes you want to latch on tighter. The more that person tells you he or
she doesn’t want you, the more your imagination concocts ways of making
that person fall for you.
I speak from experience… as people, we are capable of chasing the
person we are in love with for years and years on end to no avail. Every
time we are turned down, we fall in love a little deeper. Or so we
think.
Most of us have a difficult time distinguishing between romantic love
and love itself. Romantic love is more a sort of obsession than it is
anything else, and it’s romantic love that makes us want that which we
can’t have.
Romantic love is what turns our imaginations on high and makes it
impossible to start thinking about that one special person. The best
part of it all is that we love being in love romantically, no matter how
much it hurts.
Being in love with someone who will never love you as much as you
love him or her shakes you to your core, but you love it. Don’t get me
wrong, it hurts. It hurts a whole lot. At the same time, it makes you
feel more alive. It makes you feel more “in the moment.”
It opens you up to a side of life and a side of yourself that you
didn’t previously know existed. It’s the sort of pain that you never
forget, but at the same time look back at with a sort of fondness and
sense of nostalgia.
There’s a fine line between pain and pleasure. Romantic love walks that line.
by Paul Hudson
