The University of Love

A wise women once said we know what it means to be happy or sad, we understand what these feelings mean, but to love? How does one know what love truly is or what it feels like? Is it that butterfly feeling we get when we see those we think we love? Her statement of love has some ringing truth to it. How do you know you feel or experience love? Love I think is much deeper than a feeling you get in your stomach when you see the one you are attracted to. That feeling is more based in a simple attraction; that’s about it. Love grows deeper, love is more complex, thus difficult to define and understand. However challenging of a concept to fully grasp, I think I have an idea, a better more clear idea of what love truly is and the symptoms associated with it. When we speak of love in relation to romantic love, we speak of a love that holds the highest degree of complication. Love that is assigned to siblings, friends, etc is understood; it’s a love as easy to define as happiness or sadness. This degree of love is like starting your undergraduate program in college; basic level information to build upon later. This is the first degree. Love that is romantic is the last degree, it’s the masters program, true comprehension of this is held by the elite of the university, those that deserve accolades, praise, and notoriety for their monumental achievement. Why such a challenge to understand? Love requires more than just one mind and heart, love, by its nearly impossible nature, requires 100% comprehension by two parties that define love the same way, experience it with that same level of intensity, communicate it with similar words; they feel love the same way. What a profound impossibility! Or is it? Could our comprehension of true love come in a subtle, unannounced disguise, thus allowing its meaning to remain illusive from our minds? Or could it be so simple that we dismiss love’s meaning for fear it needs to be so much more complex or difficult? Love couldn’t be simple right? It is supposed to be hard. Or is it? Could we miss a chance at a love that is smooth, uncomplicated, understandable, mutually pleasant, or perfect because of our notion of how difficult it should be? Or perhaps we will miss the true meaning and application of love due to difficult circumstances. Missing it, many do; NOT letting it to slip through their fingers, too few are able.

I don’t want to miss it anymore; I want to be one among the few who have the strength and determination to hold on regardless of the consequence, despite the effects, and move on to a blissful state of living. I want to live with full love; knowing that the feeling is reciprocated in the same way. I know this is truly not the case for me right now. As I said before, 100% comprehension of love involves two parties that feel exactly the same, define love the same, etc. As I ponder my spot in the university of love, I’ve passed my undergraduate work, and the dean of this program wants to keep me around, but I don’t see love in the same way as she does. Her level of love is advanced, but it is graded on a different curve, moving along a path this uses a language that has become foreign to me. We started with the same general courses but headed in two opposite directions of specialty that prepared us for a different masters program and hence different universities. I feel like I’ve found a love that defines and understands it as I do, who has the potential to attend the same collegiate program as I, thus striking dangerously close to the root of love, and becoming one among the few who rise to the summit of true love and obtaining their own monumental achievement, thus becoming numbered among the elite of their university. Potential; potential; possibly a great chance, but it’s still a chance, not a certainty. How do you base such huge decisions on chance? Many great things have occurred through someone taking a chance. We shall see. We shall see.