LIENE

För ett tag sen skrev jag om mina inlämningar i engelska 6 och att jag hade fått bra respons från min lärare. Jag hann redan visa mitt personliga brev (i samma blogg-kategori) men nu lägger jag också upp min andra text som handlar om kärlek. Bry er inte om jag hänvisar till några källor, böcker och sidor, för dem flesta känner ändå inte till den arbetsboken som jag har i engelskan.

Love of Loves

It may look like the single life is more attractive than marriage for the most of today's young people. It's considered more interesting, exploring and in the opposite of marriage you're free to be and to do whatever you want. You have the freedom which you won't have if you're committed to somebody, many would say, because when you're committed to someone there's no turning back. If you're serious, you know that you've promised to be with someone for the rest of your life in front of your family or a wider audience and sometimes even in front of God, through sickness and health, for better and worse. Don't we search for something more than only short-term relationships, like a commitment? Is love just a feeling and why do we search for love anyway? Bridget Jones was worried that she'll never settle down, or better said: she was concerned she won’t be accepted and loved simply for who she is.

I sat in my swing and swung back and forth. I was 5-7 years old and I would think about love. I would sing about love. I would make up lyrics about my future love. What were the reasons behind it? Books, fairytales where the prince and princess endure trials before they live happily ever after, but how could I know what love is if I yet hadn't experienced it myself? Butterflies, rushing heartbeat, to think constantly about somebody, the feeling when you look at someone you find very attractive - I didn't even know what it all meant. It says in the text "How Do Fools Fall in Love?" in The Right Chemistry, those are only chemicals like PEA working in your body (p 42 line 12-16). Yet for me it didn't matter. Was I looking forward to something else than just the feelings and passion? The text also says that our body develops a tolerance to PEA which means that romance doesn’t last forever (p 43, line 3-7). I remember my mother once told me, when I was round 8 years old, a true story about a couple who loved each other but weren't allowed to be together by their parents who separated them. It grieved my heart because I thought it was the most unfair thing in the whole world’s history to separate two people who loved each other so deeply that they wouldn't commit themselves to anyone else after they were forced to move on with completely different lives. I think I wanted to share my life with somebody and be open to that person like with nobody else and be completely safe the person wouldn't hurt or use me, the opposite, understand me. Don't we all share the same longing? I decided in my heart that I wasn't going to love more than one person during my whole lifetime, and I dreamed I should meet "the one" already as a 10 year old, since I thought I was that much enough orientated in love already. I remember my brother told me, that I didn't know what love was. Maybe he referred to the rushing or soothing feeling we all get when we fall in love.
It arrives out of the blue. One day when you're old enough you start to think about a person, for no reason. You just do. Then you start thinking about their eyes being beautiful and so catching. You get nervous when you meet them in the school hall, but you never dare say "hello". Years pass and the person is forgotten already. You wonder why you found him or her so special if you didn't even know who they were. Therefore, there was no reason, just an attraction. Bang! You hit the ground very hard. What was the point? But it's getting worse if you're a brave teenager and you end up together with someone that you found cute and good for you but who turned out to be somebody completely else. It's harder for each time you get hurt. “Maybe love isn't that real after all? Maybe I'm not good enough? Maybe I have too high expectations and ask too much? What was I thinking? Why was I so naive? People aren't that good as I expected, right?” You ask yourself all these questions. Sometimes it may look like people get along together very well, like they're made for each other, but after a couple of years you see them with someone else and they have started building a family. “The Right Chemistry" talks about the "four-year-itch" and "seven-year-itch" (p 41, line 3-5, 17). Certainly, people have very hard to stay together, especially if they haven't a second child. There's also written that romance is just a force to help humans survive and multiply (p 39, line 13-19). On the other hand, if that was the whole truth, why would we still be hurt when somebody leaves us if it's a divorce after the "four-year-itch" or the "seven-year-itch"? If we had no feelings left, why does it still break us apart each time? I think that love has a greater purpose and so do we.
Don't we all know what love is, no dependence of how smart or what age we are? Let us say, it's because our parents loved us when we were babies; they hugged us, they took care of us, they did everything possible for us, kissed us and made us laugh. So why then, do we still feel like there's something missing? Otherwise we wouldn't search for something that we already have, and when we think that we've caught it, it's gone and the same thing happens next time also. There are indeed periods in life when we can feel for somebody "you, and only you, I want only you" and "it's you and me forever, I will love you forever" but as soon as we take distance, when years have passed, we realize that we couldn't really apply that Love to that person, because no one is perfect. Maybe we love Love itself more than the person we think we love. Is it possible that we chase the shadow more than Love itself? In this case the romance, the PEA is just a shadow. That's why we're missing the point, we're missing the mark and we wonder all those questions. We start to think that we're not worthy to be loved, because a romance requires beauty, luck, attraction and affection, and we start to believe that we have to improve for being loved because this world loves performance and appearance; lipstick, wavy hair, success, good-looking beach body, wealth and health. It's such an up-side-down world. What if we're the ones who fail to love? But one thing is clear - we all do need passion of love or else we will search for the satisfaction in addictions; whether it is make-up, shopping, gym or alcohol, and the things we thought could fill us would actually leave us emptier than before. Or! We'll just bury ourselves in hobbies to smoother the pain and loneliness. We will give up on love because we're tired of betrayal and hurt. But what if the lines that I recently found written by C.S Lewis, from his book “The Four Loves”, are right? - “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” To give up on love and to think you don't deserve it won't save you. You just have to find somebody who loves you, for who you are, somebody who already knows all your flaws and still thinks you're amazing, somebody who forgives you for your mistakes, who runs after you when you leave. After all, love is the only thing that can build you up again and welcome you in after wherever or whoever you've been. I've read a true story about Kim and Krickitt Carpenter and they kept their vows even if she lost all her memory of him after a car accident, and there are sure many more relationships which prove that love conquers. So, you're there again, after all the heights and thud. You hope and believe once more, but this time, maybe you're not running after the rushing or soothing feeling, and you're not trying to proof and fight, because, what if Love is right here? What if you are loved in this very moment? Just like a little girl, I didn't need a hug, a kiss or a romance to know that Love is real, and when you believe you start to feel. The physical feeling was just a shadow, and the shadows are there for a reason. The shadows are like a proof that the thing actually is real. If we walked down the street a sunny day and there was no shadow from us, who could tell that we are real beings? When you stop chasing the shadows, you finally realize that you are loved, and you don't hesitate to love other people in spite of their actions, and you no longer search fulfillment in another human being, because they might be just as broken as you are after all disappointments and heartbreak. Of course, all we wanted was and is love. Yet, love wouldn't be as visible as then when there has to be a development of patience, kindness, humility, forgiveness and faithfulness because these are the characters of it. These are best shown through pain, hardship and adversity and even if there are no feelings to cling on to. Maybe love is a universal, yet personal and intimate.

You buy a copy Prada bag because you think the original is too expensive, you're just not worth it. But what if you are? You are worth the love that you dream about and the longing is there for a reason.