Understanding the real meaning of love through another’s eyes
A few days ago, I met an old friend of mine. He’s treading his late 80’s and is a jolly man who’s always helped me understand the things I’ve found hard to understand. His wife had passed away a long time back, and at some point of our conversation I asked him how things were since his wife died. He joked that making love to her wasn’t the same anymore! He was only kidding! (I hope)
But then when I asked him what the real meaning of love was, he looked at me seriously. But his mind seemed to be elsewhere, somewhere far away, where he could still feel the emotion that seemed to have been extinguished from his life, and he told me something that I could never forget.
He told me, “Rick, you know you’re in love when you have a reason to come back home, a reason to justify your existence. You’ll know you’re in love when you can’t imagine living without this one person and you’ll do anything to have her by your side. You cannot see love, you cannot feel love, but you can feel a bond when you’re around this one person, and you just cannot explain it but it makes you feel special and taken care of. Love, my friend, is what makes you want to wake up tomorrow.”
That was nothing like the definition of love, but yet, it made more sense than anything else that defined love.
I felt sad for him, but what he said made me understand what love means. I could only imagine how miserable he felt inside his jovial and happy exterior. So was that love? I think it was, and I wondered if I felt the same way. I wondered if I felt like waking up every morning to a brand new day just because I had love in my life.
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