Until it Happens to You

I definitely could have landed on a much more concise topic for my first post but here we go anyway.

I read a quote the other day that goes “Brown eyes are just brown eyes, until you love someone with brown eyes”

The fact that I haven't traced the origin of this quote goes against everything we've ever been taught about writing. I don't know who said this or where, but it caught my attention nonetheless.

The fact of the matter is, I have probably come across this quote several times in my life. You probably have to, its the same sentiment reworded in about 10 different books by 10 different poets, all in slightly different ways, due to the fact that it's such a wonderfully basic premise.

This quote is the epitome of “until it happens to you”

It's simple, but true, and has prompted me to write my first post about love, one of the most oversaturated yet somehow overlooked topics.

Now, love has never been lost on me. This is probably a weird proclamation to make, but I feel confident and incredibly lucky in saying that I have always felt the importance and power of love, from my parents, brothers, family, friends, even teachers, and its most pure and uncomplicated sense, from animals.

When it came to romantic love, (the most commercialized and marketed of them all) I never cared all that much. If you asked 16 (or even 18 year old me), her take on romantic relationships, she would probably give you a relatively apathetic response. Don't get me wrong, I loved my rom coms, my love songs, but when it came to imagining it in my own life, I simply didn't think about it all that much.

Growing up, I didn't have a ton of crushes (other than the fact that I lived and breathed Harry Styles for the vast majority of my developing years.) I would welcome a crush in theory, but it seldom occupied my mind. Romantic love wasn't an aspect of life I denied or looked down on, I just felt it wasn't relevant to me. Brown eyes were just brown eyes.

As I got older and gained a sense for college life (the period of time where you start to think you know everything), I gained a better sense for the alleged “trials and tribulations” of being young and being in love. I watched my friends hurt and get hurt, and without realizing it, my stance on relationships shifted from apathy, to avoidance, to a little bit arrogant.

Based almost entirely on observation, I began to view relationships as overwhelmingly taxing, tiring, and stifling. It appeared to me that to be in a relationship, was to suffer in an unequal dynamic, one party is almost always unsatisfied. I was well aware that I had a lot to say, without ever actually being in a relationship. In all honesty I was so sure of my perspective that I didn't care about my lack of experience, (hence the air of arrogance).

I almost had the classic “you get hurt once” mentality, without ever actually being hurt by a romantic partner. I was so wrapped up in debunking love, boiling it down to just chemicals that any two people could share. I had not admitted it to myself yet, but I was removing the magic from everything.

In the attempt to dilute “love,” motivated by fear, I would frequently read research on the concept, hoping to pin it on just biology, or destiny, as a socially constructed idea, or chance, looking for a way to weaken love's importance. I thought that the fact one is more likely to fall in love with their neighbor than someone who lives across the globe, would somehow negate the value of that love next door.

Now that I am 22, (and just soooo much older and sooo much wiser) I know that it is often what's most important, that is the most cliched. Love in the romantic sense is not a necessity, but it should never be denied.

I have a friend who avoids romance, purely because life is easier that way, and for a long time we saw eye-to-eye. Many of our other friends thought this was too simplistic of a point of view and frankly stupid, but honestly it felt like we had cracked some sort of code.

I was unaware. I didn't get it.

It was simultaneously naive and arrogant of me to think that I could dismiss and look down upon an experience that I knew nothing about.

There's no point in avoiding love, and before you know it, there will come a time where you couldn't avoid it if you tried (which is what happened to me). It is then, that you are no longer “protecting” yourself, but restricting yourself, which is a tragedy in our short lifetimes.

If we all constantly limited ourselves in the name of protection, not only would we be incredibly unproductive, but none of us would be truly living. We would be collectively throwing away the advantage of being human.

At the end of the day, cliches are cliches for a reason, and “It's better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.”

The time spent denying yourself the potential for joy, out of fear and uncertainty, will pass anyway, right? The time spent loving someone you might end up losing will pass regardless. So why not spend it loving.

Embracing love is to embrace vulnerability and uncertainty. It's hard, but we can do hard things.

Regardless of reciprocation, giving love is still having love. That is never a waste.