#NoFeelings: Why It's Easier To Ignore Love Than Deal With It
Warning: I'm about to get in touch with my inner hopeless romantic (more like outer), and discuss the one thing that the 21st century hates to admit and feel: love.
More and more, I've noticed society has become rather nonchalant and dismissive of love and all that it entails. I find this is mostly because, well, we've all had some pretty crappy experiences and are now wondering if love is an idea or an actual, real-life experience.
It's evident why we feel this animosity towards love, but is it rational?
The kind of love we're used to is bonded with unrealistic and foolish expectations about achieving the ultimate happiness. In other words, it's not love. The kind of love we love to hate is actually the falsely presumed one we've mashed up in our heads with our own premature experiences.
We, as individuals, are on this constant, tragic search for someone who fits a fixed criteria (that may or may not be obtainable), and we dismantle when it falls short. We fail to acknowledge that love doesn't take requests; we get what we give.
Through certain junctures of our lives, however, we also learn and grow, which is exactly what we need.
For a moment, consider the power of destiny. A lot of you may be reading this right now and thinking, "Here we go. Yet another cryptic belief that is so utterly ridiculous." And you're right.
Destiny is pretty ridiculous and often times, incomprehensible. But, I challenge you to be more perceptive of your surroundings and recognize why you decided to go that specific bar, at that specific time and ended up running into a long-lost pal. Or, why you suddenly craved a pastry from your favorite coffee shop and swayed into conversation with that cute, bearded guy who openly admired your choice of carrot cake.
These events unfold, for better or for worse. No one can predict the intentions of others and oftentimes, we become blinded by the hate that we employ from the harmful ones. But, that's the very magic of love: It takes no precautions. You either fall and are caught, you face plant to the ground or both.
Getting our hearts broken sucks, and it's difficult to not get caught up in a blame game or fall into an anti-love rampage. It's much easier to just shun a beautiful notion such as love, than to accept our own faults and build the courage to give it another go.
Instead, we contemplate all seven deadly sins against our exes, in hopes that it'll mitigate the hurt. We pinpoint every flaw of him or her and dissect what went wrong.
The ambiguous statuses and tweets begin to take a toll. You feel an overwhelming rage and want to hate every single thing about your ex, but you can't. Those once adored parts of that person will always seem to stand out against the bad ones.
So next time you begin to feel that loathing venom grip your heart, think about the strength you obtained from that breakup. Think about the lesson(s) you grasped from that assh*le who decided to toy with you and your feelings, and about how much better off you are because of that.
Most importantly, think about how much you learned about yourself, despite the pain your ex may have caused you. Once you've reflected, all you'll feel for the schmuck is gratitude.
Like anything else that resonates within us, love has its quirks but it also has its perks. A bigger reality of love, however, is that we gain so much more than we lose. We gain hope, and that hope fuels a better you.
You can gag now.
Photo Courtesy: Tumblr
