What is your definition of love? by Shanti

I’ve been in debt of writing a guest article for this blog since forever. 🙂  Finally I decided to open up my laptop and get my thoughts flowing. Let me share a little background on why I chose the above topic for this blog-post.

Several years back there was this question tossed around a group of our friends while we were still in college, “how would you describe love?” I distinctly remember saying, “love is a combination of red, yellow and white roses”. My explanation was this – red symbolizes attraction and there cannot be love without attraction, yellow means friendship and there cannot be love without understanding, white stands for trust and there cannot be love without loyalty.

Many years have passed since we had that discussion and my opinions also have greatly changed. I am no longer a college girl with some fancy views on love.:) While I still believe the three roses concept somewhat holds true, I came to learn that there is so much more to love than just that. One thing I realized is that there cannot be such a thing as “love at first sight”. That’s just plain attraction. Love on the other hand needs time and nurturing. It needs to grow. It needs hard work. YES, like any other job you need to work hard for love. Attaining love maybe easy but sustaining it is not. Because down the road all it takes for a relationship to strain might be an argument or an action that results in hurt feelings.

I think the two most important things that matter here are commitment and forgiveness. These are the wheels on which love runs. They enable love to stand the test of time. Making the conscious choice to embrace these qualities might just make all the difference! Often people (including me ) underestimate the power of forgiveness but taking that small step needs a lot of commitment and courage, especially when you think the other person is totally at fault. Agreed, easier said than done but the encouraging fact is the more you labor for love, the greater rewards you reap…

Also equally important are having mutual respect and the patience to listen to each other. Even though it is possible that love can be communicated without actually speaking, it is sometimes wise to sit down and voice your feelings and hear out what the other person has to say, than taking the silent road.

Well, that’s my take on love. Hope this entertained you or enlightened you a bit. 🙂 So, what is your definition of love?