"I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them."
- Macon in Accidental Tourist (1988)

Just read this in someone else's blog (she's gotten it off yet someone else's blog) and thought about it for a while. That is so true!I mean I usually have problems with the word love. Someone asked me, a couple of weeks back, if I'd ever loved someone. Apart from family and friends of course. He meant love in the romantic sense. I instinctively said yes. And then i stopped to think and thought myself into knots as usual and decided that since that which I thought was love didn't last, perhaps it wasn't love after all. Then I was confronted with a terribly uncomfortable thought. What is love then? I decided, long back, that love wasn't that fluttery feeling you get when you think about or meet that special someone.

Going by how I feel for close family and friends, whom I am convinced I love, is a little difficult. I mean..if any of them was in trouble, I'd do anything within my power to help. Is that what love is then? Willingness to help? Seems a bit simplistic. Is it the almost-physical pain that ensues when they leave? Is it the responsibility that you have not to hurt them? To be there for them? The happiness you feel when you're with them or the missing or the knowledge that you can confide in them when you're sad or troubled and laugh with them when you're happy?I'm not sure, really.

Love seems to be awfully complicated an emotion. And romantic love, especially so. And if you can't even define it, how on earth do you measure it?! So in that case, it probably isn't how much you love someone (since you can't really quantify or qualify love) but what they bring out in you. I remember my mother telling me something very similar once upon a time. She said that you figure out if a relationship would work by looking at what kind of a person you are when you're with the other person. Ideally, the other person should do the same, I guess, since ultimately, we're the only ones who can best assess ourselves. If the person you're with brings out the better qualities in you, the positive qualities that flourish in happiness and love, and makes you want to be a better person, perhaps thats the sign of a lasting relationship. And when I think about it, it makes perfect sense.

Positive qualities thrive in an environment of joy and love. Therefore, the presence and growth of these qualities indicates a suitable environment, which means that you're happy and content and so on. It's a little obvious that if you're in a relationship, and you're happy and content and compassionate and so on, the significant other makes you feel that way or at least, contributes greatly to it. Which is possibly a good indicator that the relationship could work. I guess it's an indicator of the comfort level of each to the other within the relationship...

So if that's the case (i'm beginning to confuse myself and also this is beginning to sound suspiciously like the one of those theories that those old dead sociologists come up with. uh oh.) then the measure of a true (read: one that actually might work) relationship is definitely what it brings out in you, ie, what kind of a person i am with him, rather than how much I love him, having established that love cannot be defined, let alone measured.

While thinking this thru and typing it out, something else struck me - the quote is interesting. In the first sentence, the focus is on 'me' or the person who loves the significant other while the second sentence shifts the focus to the significant other, who's influence or company or love, brings out the best in 'me.' So the second sentence also seems like the less selfish one. And we all know that selfishness doesn't really have a place in love or relationships. I suppose a little bit's fine - it ensures that we don't all turn into doormats (or maybe that's just self-respect and not selfishness at all - you know, like that whole protective vz possessive debate) but a little more than that kills the love and therefore the relationship.

Ok. I'm done analysing. I'm also extremely sleepy now! There was just so much stuff I wanted to blog about last week. But I didnt get down to doing any of it coz I was just up to my neck in work! There's a poem that someone brought in, during creative writing tut, that I thought was excellent! It dealt with intimacy and love and so on (how apt) and was just so clever. I'll put it up tomorrow. So much that I read in the course of reading for lectures and tuts that got me thinking last week.

On a totally different note, I finally got through all the legwork and paperwork that needed to be done to renew my student visa. If all goes well, insya-allah, I'll get it in 4 working days which is excellent! Immigration used to take a few weeks! Need to get down to doing proper, productive work tomorrow. Oh I also tidied and sorted my cd collection and neatened up that section of the room. I'll do the rest tomorrow.

Off to dreamland now...a place of happy,warm thoughts, laughter, big bear hugs, picnics by the river, silky, sweet wine, love, sunny days with a nip in the air and holidays.

Nitey nite.