teach me, sweetheart

LOVE

Love is an important part of the human experience. Many waste their lives searching for it; searching for a concept they cannot grasp, when real love is right in front of them, staring them straight in the eye every single day. Everybody's just sitting around waiting for their perfect someone to come along so they can spend eternity in happiness with one another. Wanting to be dazzled and swept off their feet by Prince Charming. Lives spent searching and never finding it. How can they expect to? Especially when they do not even know what they are looking for in the first place; everyone's been told that when you find it, you'll know.

What does that even mean?

Love is all around them, if they would only be willing to open up their eyes and see it.

It is in the little things, those most important things, that they overlook and take for granted. Love is your friend driving you home from school everyday without you even having to ask; it is a hug when you are having a crummy week. Love is knowing that if you need to talk to them, whenever, wherever, they will take your call. It is trusting, laughing, dancing, crying, screaming, sleeping. Love is alive, and we have so much of it to give in return for all the things we receive in its name.

People say that those three dirty words are thrown around carelessly, that we constantly say "I love you" to anyone who'll accept it without meaning it in the slightest. That is a complete lie. Why spend your life saving up your love for the one person you're not even sure will ever come along? Our hearts were not filled with compassion, hope, and general love for nothing.

There is a huge difference between being in love with someone and loving someone, and while the former does not happen very often, the latter is often just as rewarding and far easier to do. Love is not set in stone; it begins, grows, changes into something great, fades, and unfortunately, ends. There are many different ways to love someone, because there are many different kinds of love. You don't have to restrict your heart to the kinds of love that make you want to shout it from the rooftops and devote everything you have to your lover. You can love your best friend, your dad, your next door neighbor who yells in incoherent languages at obscene hours of the night, your dog, your phys ed teacher, the kid who sits beside you in french who always knows the answers to your questions, the people who make you mad and the people who make you laugh until you cry.

You can love them and you should love them.

Love, like everything else in the world, is not perfect and never will be. Quit waiting for something that may not even happen. Quit holding yourself back because of love. Love is supposed to set you free, and it will if you let it. Your soulmate will come around if you let them. In the meantime: live, laugh, love. Give more and expect less and you will be surprised by the result. You will be surprised by your hearts ability to produce love and happiness in infinite amounts and your ability to feel what life is supposed to feel like. You will be surprised by people's ability to love you back even more because of it.

Love can happen if you let love in.

"All you need is love"