Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

– William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

What is love?

Is it a feeling, a state, an act, or perhaps continuous forms of these?

Love to me is like money, it means different things to different people, expresses itself based on their nature and beliefs, and means nothing in itself. Everyone wants it, or at least, a form of it, but most don’t know how to get it or manage it when they do.

Love was annoying to me for a very long time. I couldn’t understand how such a feeling like an unquenchable fire could turn cold as snow when subjected to strain or time. This led me to believe that love as an emotion is totally unreliable so I sought prerequisites before I allowed myself to feel love for anyone.

Please forgive me for bastardizing the beauty of unprecedented love, I still believe in “attraction at first sight”, I just feel that a relationship should never be based solely on emotive love or attraction.

You can rightly consider me a noob in this and also consider this a theory and you won’t be wrong, but give me a chance, let my theories soak into your thoughts, appraise them and consider the philosophies that birthed them.

The most important prerequisites for love are: Understanding, Patience and Acceptance. I believe for two people to truly love each other: they must have understood each other, their influences, motivations, aspirations, principles, philosophies, culture etc.; be patient enough to tolerate and even appreciate the differences and idiosyncrasies of one another, and then finally wholly accept each other and create beauty and strength out of their similarities and differences. These three virtues should be reciprocal in order for love to find full expression.

One of the greatest human desires is to be understood. If you take away understanding, love is just a joke. Understanding is perception and comprehension, knowing what defines a person. Once you know what defines a person you can handle them better. I once had a friend who was very secretive, gosh, it was annoying, at a point I wouldn’t have been surprised if I found out I never knew her real name all along. Truth is, she was dealing with deep betrayal from her past which she hadn’t gotten over, and once I knew and understood her, I sought to be patient with her when it was most annoying, it became a topic of amusement between us, and guess what, when she knew she was accepted, she let go little by little till she became annoyingly open about everything.

My girlfriend inspired this. Ayowumi. I’ve never come across a person who exemplifies these more. I am a piece of work, and I’ve got a lot of things about me that I’m not so proud of. When I’m about to let her into another ‘dark’ area of my life, I always begin and end with an ‘I’ll understand if you leave me’ declaration. All she does is listen, once I’m done, she always says three words: It is well. I almost never get judged, just understood and accepted. She is patient with me when I struggle with some ‘attitude’ or when I throw one of my tantrums. I never need to hear her say ‘I love you’. I know she does better than I know my name.