What is Love ?

    I’ve always believed that if love were a product in the 21st century, it would be cheap and sponsored by BIC. I will start by defending my cynicism; it is due to a recent love affair disappointment. In this article I will try to fight my urge of sharing personal details, and I will try to look at this topic from outside, but No Promises ! "No promises" is ironically a phrase I’d heard several times from my ex, a red flag which evidently forecasts the breaking of those non-promises (which is what I’ve just done, Oops!).

    If I attempt to answer the question I raised in the title, I will either end up singing Haddaway's "baby don’t hurt me," or write some more intense gibberish in this short un-researched article. So I will confess herein that I have no clue on what is love, but I will tell you through my experience ‘what is Not love?´

    Love is, first and foremost, not giving up on love. Once you give up it's over. The unpredictableness of one of the couple giving up on a relationship could sentence even the most beautiful love stories to death. Love is not always beautiful, sometimes it gets very ugly. Love is not hurting the one you love. Love is not refusing to apologize when you're wrong. Love is not using dating apps. Love is not cheating, and cheating is no longer physical or sexual, but now in 2020, it is mostly virtual. Love involves a deep sense of commitment. Love is Not many things, but it is also many other things. 

    Before writing an article on my blog, I usually ask around and try to get as many opinions and viewpoints as possible. This article is no exception. What puzzled me the most this time is that no one used the word "love" when answering all my inquiries on the topic. Some of the words I heard instead include: open-relationships, disappointment, ephemeral, non-existent, and by all means: sex. Is this what love is in 2020? a disappointing ephemeral open-relationship pumped by sex? Does this century represent the death of love? Or a renaissance of new forms of love? New forms which are struggling to survive in a world that has already been deeply touched by the modern gods and goddesses of romance like Frank Sinatra, Jane Eyre, and Julia Roberts. Should we discard all of them now and replace them by a Kardashian love model? Was Walsh in Mrs. Dalloway the only person who truly saw society's perception of change in its right form, a change that is "primarily sexual"?

    Love may not be a Breakfast at Tiffany's, and it is certainly not Shakespearian, but it is a beautiful feeling that has lost all the beauty in it. I will continue to listen to Frank Sinatra, I will continue to read and re-read Jane Eyre and  I will continue to believe in a love that is magical, even if it means I’m the only one to do so. I will end this short article with a quote by my brave hero Anne Frank:

"It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."