LOVE

“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”

- Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

Love. Almost everybody likes the idea of falling in love. According to some romance novels, the story of people who are in love is that people suffer at first yet they become happy in the end and be with the person they are in love with. Some would want to have this love story even though it is very common already. Well, it would actually make them happy. Being in love and being loved by the same person is equal to happiness, some might say. But there is actually a quote by Jim Morisson which says “People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts.”. Love hurts. But people still want to fall in love. According to Abraham Maslow in his Hierarchy of Needs, once we fulfill our Physiological Needs and Social Needs, next is our need to belong and love. People cannot live without having connections on other people.(Baumeister, 2005) To some, as well as feeling love.

A friend of mine was actually obsessed with falling in love with someone and making the same person fall in love with him. He wanted to be in love as soon as he can because that is what he thinks would make him happy. I got angry to him because the presence of his friends and family was not enough to make him feel happy. Maybe, I thought, there was something more that he was looking for. When we were in our Fourth Year High School, he fell in love with a Third Year High School student. I thought that this person who he was in love with will finally satisfy him and be happy. But no, their relationship fell apart. I actually do not know whose fault it was, but I did not blame any side. I just thought that they were somehow stupid and they’re too young to fall in love. In our first year in college, he fell in love again. This time, he was really happy being with this person. They worked things out. And I thought that finally, there was somebody that was going to make him happy. While I was here in Baguio, I heard good news about their relationship. They were really happy. Last April, I found out that my friend was depressed. They broke up. My friend did not ended their relationship, the other person did. Another friend of mine told me that the problem was determining which would be the woman and the man in their relationship because they are both bisexuals. Yes, my friend is a bisexual. They both wanted to be the woman and be taken care of by their partners. In the end, they also did not work out.

Indeed, falling in love with the right person in the right time would make us happy. But when can we know the right time and the right person? We won’t. Taking risks is not bad in finding the right person. Pain is fearful but after all the pain we will feel, we may find the right person in the end. It is said that there is a destined person for each of us. After all the suffering at first, we will be happy being with the person we are in love with in the end. Like the cliché Romance Novels.

Reference List:

Fromm, E. (1965). The Art of Loving. New York: Harper & Row.

Morisson, J. (2015). Berlin-artparasites Facebook Page. Retrived from https://www.facebook.com/berlinartparasites?fref=ts

Baumeister, R.F. (2005). The cultural animal: Human nature, meaning and social life. New York: Oxford University Press