Love is a powerful force that can make you feel better, often referred to as “the essence of our existence.” However, love can also fool us and destroy our being, resulting in the term “Loco de Amor.”

Love can make us smile or cry, feel inspired, or develop hate. Despite all that, why do we continue to love? Why do we let ourselves fall in love?

As Blaise Paschal once said, “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” As it seems, when you are in love, you will cross the line; love defies all rationale, even logic. For somebody in love, they will challenge social norms just to prove that love conquers all.

Everything has its pros and cons, when someone falls in love, they could also expect to fall out of love. Love isn’t really a feeling. Feelings are conditional and fleeting; true love is an act. True love means to commit oneself to their beloved – not only because one wants the other to be happy, but because they intend to grow in love the other. That is why love is not a matter of fate or chance, it is an act.

Love accepts differences, regardless of circumstances, which debunks the idea that one is not meant to be with somebody because of indifferences.

Simone De Beauvoir insisted men and women treat each other as equals; specifying, equality is not synonymous to sameness. She believed, instead of taking on stereotypical gender roles, a relationship will be stronger, deeper, and richer if both parties retain their individuality and pursue their own interests. Actions must not be limited and boxed into “gender roles,” instead they should be supportive in each other’s interests and respectful of individualism. Love is not about forcing someone to change; according to De Beauvoir, “The best love relationships are those where lovers are free and equal.”

Soren Kierkegaard believed a loving and committed relationship was how people became their best selves. People are not meant to discover truth alone, they are meant to learn truth by relating to each other.

When in love, one learns the more “monstrous” a partner becomes, the more love they require. Safe to say, action is the mediating point to understanding true love is accepting one in another in order to become better individuals.

If the encounter with someone changes your assumptions on existence and being, then that is love. Love sets you on a path so radically dissimilar to what you are accustomed to. It can turn you into a monster or and saint; from getting lots of sleep to losing sleep thinking about that other person, and from feeling bitter in love to being sweet.

However, one receives nourishment from the person who accepts you and becomes one to share ideals and hopes with, which will help in the journey of discovering each other.

You will know love is pure and true when a simple greeting of “Good Morning, my love” or “Take care (because I care)” changes your daily routine and even your mood upon reading it.

Kierkegaard summarized love as:

“But when the heart is filled with love, then the eye is never deceived; for love when it gives, does not scrutinize the gift… When the heart is filled with envy, then the eye has power to call forth uncleanness even in the pure; but when love dwells in the heart, then the eye has the power to foster the good in the unclean; but this eye does not see the evil but the pure, which it loves and encourages it by loving it.”

Love has the ability to see what it wants to see. Love is optimistic and wants people to end up together. However, it will not succeed without an element of sacrifice.

Sacrifice is a basic ingredient for love.

Falling in love is a leap of faith; it is a gamble and you must be ready for every consequence.

Gabriel Marquez summarized the idea by saying, “There is no greater glory than to die for love.”

As an avid fan of Martin Heidegger, I believe the best warning for those afflicted by love is to “take advantage of it now, while you are young, and suffer all you can… because these things don’t last your whole life.”

One must take a chance and risk heartbreak or suffer loneliness. To love at all is it be vulnerable; love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung out, and possibly broken. If you want to keep things intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Your heart will be locked in a casket of selfishness. However, within the dark and airless casket, it will change. It will not be broken, but will become unbreakable and impenetrable.

Love takes us up to another level, different from what is conceived from fiction novels and the media. In the language of a positivist, what we can hope for is to end up with the “right regrets,” in order to fall in love. Since you cannot fall for just anyone, the one you do fall for, you will hold on to – you will hold on because losing that person means losing the one and only thing that defines what it means to live a “beautiful life.”/WDJ