is love a feeling or a decision?

"Love, love, love.. what is it good for? Absolutely nothing." – Effy Stonem.

Love is defined as the strong feeling of affection towards someone or something, having a great interest and pleasure. It is the passion, the adoration, the fondness, the devotion, the craze and the fixation for a thing or a person. An addiction of some sort. Love isn't a short-lived state of infatuation, it is way beyond that.

I have always assumed ever since I was young that love is a feeling. Love was involuntary and you could not fight it, you instead allow it to consume you. Foolish, delusional, inexperienced and young come to mind whenever I remember how I portrayed love as.

        And if people really knew me they would know that I do not live by the constitutional norms the past created in order for the future generations to follow mindlessly, I challenge these thoughts and ideologies in order to find the ultimate truth. I am comforted with the idea that I got the answer I searched for.

Because of that, over the course of numerous scorching months I realized that feelings are lucid and abstract because they can be in the form of an idea or belief, especially a vague or irrational one. Feelings cannot be easily fabricated into statements because it would undervalue the power of emotion, and that to me is an ultimate crime anybody can commit.

Also I have come to the conclusion that opinions and feelings do not vary, they are one and the same. You have this opinion because you feel a specific emotion towards it and vice versa is applicable – the dual balance of emotion and opinion is needed in order for us to have a a self-comforting state of mind. An example could be food, I am a person that dislikes seafood of all sorts. I hate it because I have this feeling of repulsion towards it. Under normal circumstances, I could never like seafood because I hate it. Your emotions should be agreeing with your opinions, and I am not limiting the capabilities of how we should recept emotion. It is just how it should be.

If we consider them, opinions and emotions, to be under one umbrella then we should understand how opinions change and eventually our feelings change as a result. I have been in so many failed relationships with old friends and associates which leads me to logically reach this state of identifying how and why we choose to love people, why we decide to let into our lives, why we share our deepest secrets and why we cry our eyes out to them. We made our mind up to welcome this specific person into our world, our dreams, our desires, our nightmares, our fears, our reality..

Possible because they were like-minded? Were they open, upfront, straightforward, did they give you warmth and made you feel as if home wasn't a place but it was a person you go to? Or so we thought. 

They change  and we change as well. We begin to contradict our own younger selves and so do they, realizing how toxic the combination is potentially becoming after years of agreement, we have to sometimes cut them loose and set them free. By setting other people free, we are subconsciously setting ourselves free too. We are getting free from the knots that are tying down instead of bringing us up. 

But why do people resist this change? Resist knowing that things aren't the same anymore, resist that emotions can be fleeting. No one seems to want to talk about how those loving feelings can fade, that it takes work to keep the love alive, and that choosing to stay in love is a choice we all must make just as much as choosing to not stay in love anymore.

Love will not be exclusively a feeling or an emotion or a state of mind or an opinion, it is way beyond this banner because it is a responsibility. Love isn't some gift you buy and give away, love is a spiral of actions and determination. Love is a cycle of giving and taking. It is a responsibility you should keep and a promise you shall hold, if you cannot be responsible towards such powerful emotion then do not keep such promise.

Only love if your heart allows you to, you have the resourceful capability of denying or accepting affection. 

Who we love is much more of a choice as it is a feeling. Staying in love takes a commitment from one's side. After the spark and instant chemistry of the new relationship wears off, we have to make a decision: Do we want to love this person and commit to a relationship or are we going to let this person go?

But how do you know if they are worth keeping?

Some might remember the main reasons we accepted this person in the first place, what made you open your arms in embrace for that person?

Is it worth the trouble and the heartache?

Others believe that beyond all the sappiness and pettiness, there is something much more rewarding to stay and decline the open opportunity of leaving.

Besides what is more important that self-love? Love yourself so much that you could be able to share it with other people. Love is beautiful when shared and people fall in love with the way you love yourself. 

For the most part I can conclude that love is a choice. A choice backed by opinions, thoughts, feelings and emotions gobbled up. But it is a choice eventually, we are prone to the power of thinking rationally before setting a stepping stone because the beginning of something is the most important task. Although some humans have lesser rational thinking capabilities compared to others, that is another subjective topic which I might (or might not) resort to later. 

I just would like to state that I can never be right, I can always be wrong.
Please feel free to contradict me or discuss with me.

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