Musings of a sleepy (and potentially sick) mind

Love is a battle, love is a war; love is growing up - James Arthur Baldwin

I've been thinking about this particular phrase since I read it a couple of days ago. First of all, I agree with it. It makes sense to me. But for some strange reason, I don't necessarily apply this assertion to what I define as 'romantic love'. I apply it to all kinds of love - whatever that may mean, whatever that may entail.

I have not experienced love in a romantic sense yet. Yes, I have liked people, be smitten, had crushes here and there. But that is not love. To me, starting a relationship is the beginning of the love journey. That is, love will be born, appear like a seed, and during that process of getting to know someone better, of understanding him/her, of accepting him/her as he/she is, of trying to be better for this significant other; that's how love will grow and become stronger - as the feeling emerges and continues developing, so do we as people who are falling in love, who are in love. That journey is not easy and sometimes, at the end of the day, the soil in which that love seed was growing may not be good enough, so the seed will die and we, at that moment, we will be losing the love battle. Yet, we will learn, we will realize that there are other terrains where our love seed can be planted. In that sense, we lost a battle, yet, is not the end of the war. Victory may be awaiting.

Loving friends can also be as complicated. First, we learn to trust, we learn to be comfortable with some stranger who may or may not have the same interests. Then, we try to know more, Like romantic love, friendly love is also a journey. It is about learning from and about each other. It is about understanding, about tolerance, and patience. In this sense, it is just like romantic love. After all, sometimes people tell me that one's beloved is indeed one's best friend. So what makes it different? To me, maybe it's the fact that while one can marry and promise to spend the rest of one's life with the significant other, with friends, every single person has and leads a different life. Keeping in touch, seeing in other becomes harder as time passes by. So while long distance relationships are temporary tests to people's romantic love (their strength, their truth I suppose), in friendly love distance becomes something more permanent. We all know that no matter how many weeks or months one spends away from the potential or present husband or wife, at some point, they will be back together and enjoy the bliss of being, well, married. With friends, you don't see them every day, you don't hang out every weekend, you don't even talk to each other every week. Life becomes busier and writing is even a hassle.

But it is that friendly love which will make one write even if four months have passed. It is that love that will make one call them once one discovers that he/she will be visiting the city where they are living in. It is that love that makes them call you, fly to be with you, give you comfort when you need company or feel alone. It is that love which made me understand that while our personalities may not match, although our interests may not be the same all the time, or our beliefs are different, we share a connection. Because we grew up as we shared some good and bad experiences.

And then, family love. I don't know how to put this in words, but I will try. This type of love is just like the others, yet, it is so different. For one, the journey does not necessarily start from nothing. Love is already there. As we are born, usually, we are already loved by our parents. There will be times during which there is a fall out, but as anger and resentment fade away (even if it is too late), somehow, we learn to love back - or at least, as much as our hearts allow us to. We love our parents, our siblings, and do and want the best for each other. Like significant others and friends, family will always be there. Their love is something we can always count on. But unlike friends and family, there is a bond beyond shared experiences and stories. There is the bond of blood, of flesh, of shared legacies, generations. There is also the bond that goes beyond the present and seeks to transcend in the future. Like a war, family love is about fights and survival, about alliances and treaties where different tactics and strategies need to be understood and accepted, where a mistake becomes a lesson not of just one soldier but of the whole group, and of those troops that will come and fight in a future battle. Victory comes in cycles, and lessons are accumulated so they become a booklet of information that posterior generations will read or hear about.

So, while romantic love is about growing up such that one learns to share a life with someone else, and friendly love is about growing up so that distance and seemingly incomprehensible differences become part of the personas one trusts and confides in; family love is about growing up such that there is unconditional acceptance and understanding as mistakes and errors are committed. Yet, this acceptance is not the kind that entails defeat. It is acceptance that comes with knowledge and an open heart: no matter how many changes happen, at its core, someone is still the same - part of the same family, part of the same group.

Love is convoluted. I have divided it in three types but at the end of the day, it is still the same feeling. Thinking further about it, one becomes love. One is love. That's why it is a battle, a war, growing up. We go against adversity, we fight to win, we suffer, we live. During those processes, we learn and then, hopefully, we grow. We become better as persons. Life may still suck sometimes, but the richness and depth of our stories (alone or with other people) make us different types of trees that have evolved from a tiny seed.