Love

Since little, I was told that in our family, “when love comes in, there are no factors, no inhibitions,
you just love and conquer”, that is like the mantra of our clan; the reason I grew up
romanticizing the word love thinking it is something that is perfect. I began making scenarios in
my head hoping it would be the reality someday, and that is how I discovered reading and
writing. Why should I read them? Why should I write? It dawns to me that it is easier to picture
things when you read and write them, getting into the character shoes and believing it is you.
Being the hopeless romantic that I am, I found a magical book that completely evoked my
family’s mantra, telling me that we can love with no inhibitions and conquer the world for that
love but it does not mean a happy ending, there are factors, there can be a large fence telling
you to stop right there and go back, for that love is done. Hell would lose but Jade from the book
written by Patch, “Loving the green stone” will forever be engraved in my heart. She cleared my
mind from my clouded belief that love is pure perfection, and opened me to a different definition
and probably the darkest I have ever heard, that love is a commodity even vast fortunes could
not afford, that love is a heartless bastard, it can twist your brain and make you believe that
black is white. Jade taught me that love is not a feeling like what I have been thinking all along,
she taught me that it is a choice, it is a choice to stay in that love so is to leave. While reading
her story, I was having a mental battle between myself, asking if I had a wrong idea about love
growing up or Jade is just simply telling me that there are more words to describe love other
than perfection. What made her remarkable was her way of telling me I was not wrong for
thinking that love is perfect because it is, what makes it not is the person you are feeling it with,
but it just makes it perfectly imperfect. Her story may seem cliché and overrated for someone,
but for me who has a high respect for love, it is everything to me. Even Mahatma Ghandi once
said, where there is love, there is life.