It may sound silly, but it is an important question: Have you ever truly loved someone? It doesn’t matter if the person also loves you; your love is enough. True love is not competition; it is not conditional; it is simple and pure. Most often when we talk about love, we think of romantic love. It is almost always an automatic interpretation. Not that it is the only kind (there is brotherly love, sisterly love, love for your friends, parents and teachers.) But since it is the one that does, or at some point in time has, influenced most of us in ways deeper than others, I want to dedicate this article to what in a few words can be referred to as ‘Romance: An Eternal Love Affair.’

What is love? It is an emotional connect and feeling of affection/likeness for someone. It’s important that you realize that it is a feeling. As humans, we are emotional beings with different kinds of feelings: feeling of love, hate, anger, envy, gratitude, ego, and many more. Now, if you are angry on something that just happened, for instance, chances are with time (for some a few minutes; for others a few months or more), that feeling will lose it’s intensity as other feelings and things start to occupy your mind.

This is a fact. You can’t continue to remain as angry as you are right now on the same thing a month from now. Though you may still be angry, you won’t for the next one month, for all your waking hours, be equally angry. If that is true for anger as a feeling, you can agree that it would be the same if you got irritated or jealous or were sad or happy. Call it a curse or a blessing, our human nature is to experience all feelings in varying intensities at different points in time. Sometimes, we experience many emotions at the same time. Well, love is the same. It is a feeling whose energy in our lives for someone or something varies constantly.

Gulp that thought in, and then slowly digest it. That’s the first step. The second is deeper; it questions your claim of having truly loved someone. There are three kinds of people reading this article right now a) those who love someone entirely on conditions of ifs and buts; b) those of you who sometimes, not always, are able to put your love before your anger and ego, and deal with the situation wisely to reinstate love; and c) those, who with time and life’s experience have understood the meaning of true love, and handle all situations, of what may otherwise be negative, with wisdom that only love can enhance love; not anything else.

Though we would love to be the third kind, most of us fall in the first and second categories. It’s like we feel love for someone, but suddenly something ‘bad’ happens, and that feeling  is replaced by anger instantly. If that is what you call love, then sadly enough, though you might claim to have really loved someone, the truth is you haven’t.

Romance is a beautiful experience for the soul. It involves true passion, care, and affection for another human whom you consider to be closest to your heart. Something so pure can’t be nurtured with feelings of hate, envy, and anger. You need to be better than that. You need to access the power of your conscious and sub-conscious to better train your mind, and guide your feelings on the path of eternal love. If not, unfortunately, you are bound to travel person to person, place to place, in search of the ‘right one’, until you lose your energy, youth, and opportunity only to realize ‘that could have been it.’

So, don’t wait for someone to truly love you by binding them by conditions, expectations, obligations, or judgement. Rather, cherish the good in them as it is, and you would be surprised how as you appreciate all that is healthy in your lover, you start discovering even more to love in them. That will be the beginning of your love affair with romance.

A Gift: You know I like to give you some gifts of resources to expedite your journey to enlightenment. This book is definitely the answer. It is Miguel Ruiz’s ‘The Four Agreements’ which helps you build the philosophy of loving everything and everyone around you with no conditions, expectations, obligations, and judgement. Please find below the links to get your copy:

India Readers

US Readers

UK Readers

For Others

Check out your local bookstore or available websites. You should be able to access a copy.

For All of You

You can also Click Here to Purchase my recently launched ’50 Legends and 500 Motivational Quotes’ E-Book for less than half the price of a cup of coffee. Don’t Wait, grab yours immediately. All it takes is two minutes.