Please Don't

So I'm taking this course that literally teaches me how to ask questions...or rather it teaches me to ask why - then when a  woman asks why it never ends there; there's always a bunch of questions just lying in wait.

So, as typical as it may sound, I found myself asking a bunch of questions; especially concerning the relationships I have - personal, professional and otherwise. So in the process, I came down to a fundamental question that most of us are afraid to ask ourselves...Why do we love the people we claim to love? why do we stick with these people and why do we maintain the relationships that we have with them?

But I got stuck at the definition of love.

What is Love?

I think love is honesty - to yourself and the other person. When you love someone you have to be honest with them; pretty or ugly, you have to be honest with them.

That means that when you decide to do something with them, or choose to say something to them it has to be something you really mean and not something you do just to hush any possible conflicts. Ideally, any good relationship must have conflicts, and without them, you really can't figure out if you can press the reset button and move on after a major argument.

But then, that also means that when you love someone, you have to be vulnerable to getting hurt. It's like giving someone your kryptonite and hoping that they never get to use it against you... sounds like blackmail, but it really isn't.

In actual sense, loving someone means that you have to be cool even when they are honest enough not to choose you. Even when they get selfish and pick themselves over you, even when they pick up kryptonite and throw it in your face...that's love.

Now don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean that it's all bad, it just means that even when you do all the sweet nice things, all the crazy wrong things and the things that are straight out outrageous, you have to do them because that's what you really what you want to do.

You have to choose to do those things for the people, not for fear that they may walk away if you don't, but because you have a conviction that that's exactly what you want to do.

So at the end of the day, Love is a choice that no one can make for you. And if you find yourself in a situation where you do stuff for the people you claim to love just because you are trying to be nice, or to avoid conflict, and yet it's not really what you want to do, then that's not love, that's selfishness - because I'm sure a lot of people will agree that they had rather be given the cold hard truth than be pampered by a lie!!