What Is Love? Baby I Have No Idea.

No idea whatsoever.

I would just like to use the “Baby don’t hurt me, don”t hurt me, no more” answer. But that would make this post way too short and too boring for the likes of me.

Why come up with this question? After all, in our twenties we are supposed to know the answer to this, or at least pretend we do. After all, love is one of the most subjective things there is.

I used to define love as the combination of making the decision to love, the biological reaction towards another human being and a special connection that is some times beyond understanding.

That was love for me.

The biological reaction could be many things, seeing that person and being simply happy, the butterflies in the stomach, the feeling of completion and fullfilment by the simple fact of sharing life with that significant other.This biological reactions account for the bodily part of the equation, and as everything in biology, this is an incremental change that requires a catalyst—aka the other person’s presence—. All of those things and more are the biological factor in my Love Equation.

When it comes the **special connection **I defined it as simply the feeling that this person, this other being that appeared in your life, is more important than what meet the eye. She (and by She I mean anyone) is important for you beyond understanding and reason, there is a click inside of you that insists on telling you how everything makes sense, somehow it does make sense.

The reason behind this special connection that is beyond understanding, is worth of a publication of it’s own, and it varies depending on everyone’s believes and ideas of life itself. Long story short (TL:DR): that person is connected to you somehow and the chances of you meeting that person among so many others were much higher than the average.

Now now now, the easiest part to explain but the hardest to make other’s understand is the decision to love. Yes, you decide who you love and who you don’t love.

It might sound untrue and even ridiculous to think of this, popular media insist on telling the story of the “uncontrollable love” that attacks in the least expected moment. And this is true in a lot of cases, but even so, you decided at some point or the other to give away your love for this person.

Have you ever heard someone saying “I don’t want to love X person anymore”? How long does it take for that love to diminish and soon dissapear? In most cases not long. The decision of stop loving was taken.

I think taking the “stop loving” decision is much harder than the “start loving” one. Usually we start loving quire easily. But it’s always, _and I mean _always a decision to love.

Or at least that’s what I thought.

Everything I just told you are lies. Lies with a lot of truth in them, the problem is that they are not the whole picture. I was sure I had managed to answer the question of “What Is Love?” better than most people. Since most people seem to go with the flow and not give it much thought.

What I just said it’s a lie, but it’s also truth. It applies to other individuals, people you meet, random strangers that come into your life from apparently nowhere. In most cases, my Love Equation applies perfectly. Maybe with some tweaks here and there based on your own personality and believes. But it does apply.

The problem with that, is that I never really gave much though on the inconditional love**. **You know, that family love, mother-son love, for cow’s sake, even dog’s love! What about that? A son never really decides to love his mother, the dog, I cannot be sure here, but most likely doesn’t decide that neither. The love is just here.

My explanation to this was simply: the special connection **of those two individuals, namely mother and son, is **so, so strong, that there is no real need for a decision to be made, maybe not even a biological reaction is required for the love to simply spring or be created.

This all changed the moment I saw my daughter being born.

Holy Shit.

Love.

I just, loved her.

Out of nowhere.

Out of absolutely nowhere. I felt the most profound, pure, beautiful and real love I have ever felt.

You know the saying that “You will understand once you have children”? Dude, you have no idea how truth that is. I mean it.

It was sudden, it was unexpected, it was amazingly profound and shocking. I felt like if a pillow-rainbow-train hit me in the face at full speed.

I cried.

I don’t remember ever crying of happiness. I remember thinking when I saw those movies about people happiness-crying to be, well, quite weird. Yet there I was, crying like a “little girl” out of pure joy.

It was amazing.

The feeling came out of nowhere, it was simply unexplicable. I never decided to love her, maybe the labor thing could be considered the biological reaction, but it didn’t feel like it for me.

Which leaves me with only one out of my three variables in the love equation. The special connection.

No one can argue that there is no special connection between father and daughter. Even though I didn’t have to carry her for 9 months or, well, do anything in that aspect, really, the connection is there, and let me tell you is strong as fuck.

My daughter made me rethink everything I thought I knew about love, joy and life itself. I’m thinking what supposedly I already knew.

It feels like I was just living a different live with different ideas. The sky turned pink from one moment to the other and the pillow-rainbow-train continues to choo-choo all the way. Hitting me every time I see my little one.

For now I can only say that love is something that hits you.

It just splash in your face.

I feel in love out of the blue, for a pinky girl that cries to be in my arms.