ethanunzicker is sunburned already
love is a dangerous thing — 5 months ago
Ahhh love. That wonderful word that everyone wants to talk about but is to afraid to. Especially guys. Apparently it’s not considered manly, among men anyway, to think and talk about love.
Whatever. I think love is the most beautiful word in the English language. I actually want to get a tattoo of the word love in bold black letters just because I thinks it’s so beautiful. The way it’s spelled, the way it sounds, everything it means. It’s all good.
I was thinking a little bit about love a second ago and figured I’d better start writing before I forget it all. Love is a really dangerous thing. Love is the greatest thing one can experience. Everyone wants to feel loved and deep down everyone want to give love. But what so dangerous is that we only have control over our love. Love is a verb, as DC Talk said so wisely so long ago. Love is what you give to someone else. It’s an inner stirring that is always followed by action. Love is kind of like heat. The word heat actually means “the transfer of thermal energy”. Thermal energy is the actual movement of the molecules being accelerated in something. But when the effect of the accelerated molecules is perceived in some way, that perception is called heat. It’s the thermal energy causing molecules to be accelerated. So when you sit by a fire, the fire is the pure effect thermal energy but that energy is transfered to you and molecules in your body are accelerated. The transfer itself is called heat. Make sense? Probably not because I can’t explain stuff worth a crap.
But in my mind, I realize that love is the same way. It’s this weird, nearly unexplainable thing that takes place inside you and it’s only recognized because of it’s transfer, when it’s given to someone else.
We can’t control anyone else’s love, only our own. We can let others love us, but we can’t make them love us. People will either love us or they won’t, but it’s the individual who will allow himself to receive the love or not. Again with the heat analogy(and I really hope you understood that because I’m gonna use it the rest of the entry), and let’s say the paper(I’m gonna use paper instead of person perceiving it) and fire have minds of their own: if enough thermal energy is transfered from that fire to a piece of paper, eventually that paper will too start on fire. The fire is going to throw out thermal energy no matter what but if that paper is close enough, it is consumed and bursts into flame. The paper has no control over whether or not the fire emits thermal energy but the paper has control over whether or not it allows itself to receive that energy by how close it allows itself to get to the fire.
Now let’s say this fire’s desire is to have this piece of paper join it so that it can be bigger. The fire has two choices. He(the fire is a boy apparently) can wait for the paper to get near to it so that it’s ignited. He could wait for the paper to choose to allow itself to receive thermal energy. But that leaves the fire with no control over making itself bigger. It’s all in the hands of the paper. But what if the fire suddenly realized that he could move. He suddenly realized that if he really wants to get bigger, he has to pick his flaming self up and move towards the paper. That puts the responsibility in his hands. He can take his desire to get bigger and move towards the paper and if he gets close enough, the paper can’t help but become engulfed in flames. In this analogy, I made the two beings, fire and paper, independent. They can each exist separate from each other and they each have to choice to move wherever and however they want. That’s makes the responsibility mutual, I guess. The paper could choose to move close to the fire because it wants its heat, but what if the fire doesn’t want to give its heat to the paper and decides to move farther away? What if the fire wants to give all its heat to the paper but the paper doesn’t want to be consumed?
So which is it better to be, the paper or the fire? Would you rather have heat to give and no one to receive or the desire to receive but no one to give? What if, as fire, you realized that there has been paper standing there your whole life and it’s just waiting for you so come consume it? What if, as paper, you realize that the fire has been there all along and all you have to do is jump in? What if, as either one, you realize the other has been moving and you have been the one moving away every time?
What if you could realize that you have heat to offer and then do whatever you can to give it to the paper. What if you could realize there is heat that is offered and you move yourself as close to it as possible and allow yourself to be consumed.
But what if the paper and fire realized the mutuality. What if the fire realized that the paper wanted to be consumed and the paper realized the fire wanted to consume it? Would not the best reaction be for the fire and the paper to move simultaneously toward one another?
This is why love is dangerous. Because it requires faith. It raises “what if” questions. What if they don’t want my love? What if they don’t want to give me their love? . “What if” questions are never the right questions to ask. “What if” questions never give you the answer you want. If you ask “What if they don’t love me” then the answer is “I will be disappointed and miserable”. That’s the answer to the question. That doesn’t help your situation. If you want to ask that “what if” then you had better ask “What if they do love me?” The answer being “then you’ll live happily ever after”. Still it doesn’t help your current situation. You still don’t know if that person loves you or not. You will sit and ask yourself these questions and not have any answer that helps your situation. The only way to solve the problem is to say “They might love me, they might not”. Only then can you ask the question “So, now what do I do?”. Now you make your choice. You will either move towards someone or run away.
Love is dangerous because you never know the outcome until YOU move. You will ,as the fire, move towards the paper with the ever-present possibility that they might run away, afraid or unwilling to be consumed. You will, as the paper, move towards the fire with the ever-present possibility that they are unwilling to give their heat and they too might run away.
Love is dangerous because you can’t force the fire to give you it’s heat and you can’t force the paper to jump in. You have to make the first step not knowing what the other will choose.
But when you know what the other will choose, you can move accordingly. The only way to know is to take the first step yourself.
(my computer is about to die so I gotta stop thinking on here)
