Love - the favoured material of films, songs, and novels. The indescribable, complex, and irreplaceable state of soul which we strive to achieve and once achieved either lost before having a chance to thoroughly relish or left to wither in the churn of life.
Everyone would have a different description if we were asked to define love. It takes each of us to completely different lands, introduces us to different facets of ourselves, and can easily confuse us if it doesn’t fit within the conformity of the previous descriptions. Do we all have to feel butterflies in our stomachs? Doesn’t it count as love if we aren’t devoured by jealousy? For instance, that innocent and angry joy we have for the kid who dropped an ant through the back of our shirt when we were young, that feeling, is that love? Or the vain pride when we find a rose under our desk in middle school? And the first kiss in high school, the first dizziness, the sleepless nights, those secretive first meetings, and pages and pages of diaries kept for unrequited love, are these omens of love? Isn’t it a part of love when we fall for the images jumping out of a phone screen? Considering we have actual courses about “tips for online dating,” who can claim that “love lived through social media isn’t real”? What I mean is, it’s inevitable to find as many aspects and manifestations of love as there are souls roaming through the world. Long story short, even with the ever-changing methods and forms over the centuries, love is “endless” in and of itself since we haven’t yet given up on the idea of “falling in love.” So, what makes it “fin”ite for us? What causes it to fall so far away that we give up on it, shut ourselves off to it, or stop searching for it desperately?
Back To The Beginning
A lot is hidden in the words of my dear teacher Duygu Sağıroğlu: “When you’re telling the story of the love of two people, you’re telling the story of the entire universe through them.” If we went back to the beginning, we can remember, just for a moment, how we came to this world, that we are seeds born from the union of two bodies... If we thought about that first heartbeat in our mother’s womb... Maybe then, we could remember somewhere deep inside, that when we fell on this earth as a tiny particle, we began this journey to feel complete. Isn’t this the deepest feeling about love? To be complete, to return home, to find that feeling of home... And the career ladder we move up on; the achievements, awards, pay checks we run after; all striving to find this feeling... The thousands
of selfies we take wherever we go in the world... The effort
to answer each call with a promise of beauty... Even the busy life we spend with our spouses unable to really share a single emotion... When all this fails to save us from that sense of void, don’t we all just want to stop and yell at the top of our lungs, “Why is there still something missing?” Can love be the most effective cure to feel alive, to feel that we are actually living? And if we came across someone who makes us feel this, if we have had the chance to love the universe in the image of someone else, to respire in someone else’s breath, don’t we feel that we are alive, that we exist with our whole being? This feeling seems eternal, and in fact, we become attached to this state of soul, this joy rather than the person mediating it. The overflowing ecstasy taking hold of our hearts brings us so close to the consciousness of eternity, and makes us feel so unified and whole that, we’re terrified of losing it. The moment fear enters the picture, that sense of eternity shatters. In a cycle as such, we are doomed to chase that feeling, find it,and lose it again. We either put too much distance between our souls and put out that spark or cling to it too much and scare off the other person. We just cannot deal with it. Friends give advice based on their own experiences, but they are all useless. After all, there is nothing better than just living it... Because love doesn’t give us another choice but to live it... It’s inevitable. you can’t hide from it. It is the challenge that the soul has to face to grow, whatever the price may be. Love, essentially doesn’t promise a flawless and everlasting happiness...
Love, on the contrary, encourages you to push your boundaries, to transform; it reveals your deepest scars and makes a fuss demanding attention until you acknowledge and accept them with affection. It introduces you to joy and anger, compassion and pain. It unites your childishness and joyfullness. Love invites you to an adventure with no guarantee of entertainment. This is a one-way ticket issued for one person only. Because when you take that route once, no matter what happens, you are no longer the same... If you stay the same, you weren’t in love to begin with... In the deepest corners of your heart, you wish to take shelter in the breath of your beloved, to find warmth on their lips, to cure your scars with their skin, to see the sunrise in their smile, and to be filled with hope that everything will be better. When you say, “I love you,” you actually wish to say “I see you and I want you to see me.” You cling to that feeling of home it reminds you of and wish to stay there. But there’s no “stopping” in the dictionary of love.
Once you meet on the same route, you promoted from “lovers” to “comrades.” You walk on a pebbled path barefooted and pray not to get hurt. There’s no end to what you want. Isn’t this the reason we surrender to the conceived knowledge when they say, “There’s no eternal love”? If, instead, they said “Making love endless is solely up to us,” how many of us would volunteer for such an expedition? A few laughs together, a passionate makeup session after an argument, making love after doing the dishes or the laundry - all in a tone quite unlike what we see in films. Maybe, eternity lies in the moments when we create the Voltron as we’re changing a diaper. When unappreciated, those moments melt away in the constant expectation of something more. Hours, days, nights pass by while we wait to be more peaceful, richer, and healthier, unaware that what we’re waiting for is happening at that exact moment. Isn’t the fact that we slowly and surely consume our lives without this realization sadder than what we call the pangs of love? Maybe this, is the exact reason why we never give up on setting off on this journey, offering the biggest growth and keep on building those emerald bridges towards the heart that invites ours. Maybe eternal love is the sum of the moments in which we manage to stay balanced on that bridge from one heart to another. As long as we breathe, there always is the possibility to be the same with love. Just as long as we’re intent on making it “end”less and appreciating it “in the present.”