I have once heard someone say, ”I can live without love,” and I wondered if one could really do. At the back of my mind I thought how could he possibly say that? It was one of the few times that I began to stop and contemplate of what really love is. Of what it does to us humans and what is its significance in our existence. And as my thought sailed to the few definitions of love that I know and to my personal perception to every meaning and sense of the word I knew that his notion is, to its entirety, not possible at all. Perhaps what that person meant in saying that is that he can live without someone to love and someone loving him back the way a girlfriend does. It was an absolute misconception of love and/or perhaps a very stupid choice of word on his part.
Love is too broad to define. Not a sentence, a paragraph or even a whole book in any given language could entirely explain what love is. Most lines that are ambitiously trying to make us understand love that we read from some books or somewhere else are merely brief and incomplete presentation of the many definitions of love, definitions of love that are enough to fill the depth of void.
Love is a mystery that is too large to grasp.
A little boy playing with a new toy as a birthday present after his birthday party could say that he is being loved. Albeit his innocence he knew his parents love him. A grin from a young boy straight towards his older brother after driving away a couple of kids bullying him shows a glimpse of proof that a brotherly love is present. The sight of an old woman being lead to the other side of a busy street by a young man completely a stranger to her suggests the sharing of love even to people that are not closely related. Love is omnipresent. It could be the experience of happiness, security and altruism.
The omnipresence of love is undeniably true and real. It is true because at any given time or in any given place one could be brushing elbows with people experiencing love and are happy about it. It is real for it is also a personal experience. One could never lie to have failed to feel love. Love exists almost everywhere and could never be ignored at all. For as long as the existence of man linger love and the experience of love will all and the same stay.
Love is a gift.
It is a birthright. And just like any other gift we are presented with only two options whether to accept it or not. Whether to experience it and let others experience it through us or avoid it and deny ourselves of the possible bliss that is to be experienced with love. But love is too strong to ignore. Only a person that is terribly ill would deny himself of this real human experience. Perhaps somebody who has not understood what love really is could confidently say he hasn’t experienced love nor could he live without it. To love is innate and to be loved is a choice.
How we love and how we are loved could define the very person that we are. Choosing to love and consequently be loved back lifts ourselves to heights enough to give us a bird’s eye view of what kind of life we are living. Love could even bring us to distance. It could lead us to discover feelings and emotions we never thought could have existed. Realizing we are living a life founded by love is an experience of joy and in itself an experience of love.
Personally I couldn’t think I could live without love. The absence of love is almost similar to a world without air. I’d rather be born without limbs than to have not the idea of what love and its experience is. For a fact I was born out of love, raised with love and am living with and for love. Love from my parents and siblings is an assurance that I will never live alone. That I am not to live in desperation and loneliness. Love found from my friends made me realize that my family is not isolated within the four corners of what I call home. What I have been, have become and will become is surely a product of love, its influence and from its experience. Without love my life could have been lifeless. Love from my parents, siblings, friends and colleagues are treasures I would never barter for anything. Not even for all the wealth of the world.
One cannot be complete without love as an element of his life. Love shapes us to be what we are supposed to be. It is the ink that makes the blueprint or our lives. Love brings us close to people, nurtures our interest and fuels our desire to live. Without love what are we? Perhaps merely leaves whose lives stretches only from the stem to the ground. Maybe a wave that after kissing the sands of the shore will be replaced by another wave and would completely be ushered into oblivion. Into nothingness.
Thus, a line from Manuel Dy Jr.’s A Phenomenology of Love says, “Without love, you are nothing at all.”
