Is love vital?

The definition of love has been changed through centuries and cultures, from ancient civilizations, to the Bible, then Shakespeare and finally to the American pop culture; but still love is a commodity rather than state. It is the cause for our problems, or solutions, or grace, but it’s not the definition of our lives, is it?

We live in a multicultural, actual and non-stop connected society of more than seven billion people living in it and we still tend to get quite lonely. But we have family, friends and sometimes even strangers to look after us and we still thirst over that one thing that seems exotic: romance, to the point where we let self-destruction, vanity and dependence ruin our lives. Is that the right decision? We do need some thrill to keep going, a fantasy to make reality bearable – but that is just another excuse for lying to ourselves, and where’s the thrill in that? Why don’t we stop to see where we are, who’s around us, what we have and what we’re given: romance is not the vital element we’re looking for.

In our modern world, love has acquired a context of a physical, or rather sexual, feeling between two individuals – and it has lost it’s personal values to the point where we use the phrase ‘I love you’ lousy, without even meaning it. Or the opposite: like me, having a problem of saying it, sometimes even to people who you need to tell it to. But to learn to say it to somebody, first learn to say it to yourself.

And that lesson I learned the hard way. Just like water, air and food, love is vital too, but in a reflexive way, self-love is vital. But not to our bodies – to our minds. In our eternal search for a soulmate, we never once think about our own good, constantly making a mask that we put for others to see. Now is the time to sit down and believe that inner expression of love is possible, in the form of self-acceptance and admiration.

And break through that wall: look into the mirror and say the words: the magical ice breaker between you and chasing that happiness. Love is only vital when we feel it towards ourselves, then the real thing starts. Life is too sophisticated for us to feel inner hate, so why do it?