This question—so brief yet so profound—follows me like a silent echo. What is love, after all? I’m not talking about the predictable kind, the one already wrapped in ready-made words, but the love that pulls us from the ground, that unsettles and transforms us. Is love loss or discovery? Courage or fear? Perhaps it is all of this, and even more.
Today, I woke up with the feeling that love is watching me, patient, waiting for me to define it. But it refuses to be defined. It is vast, elusive, slipping through words like sand between fingers. Love is? Love is being and not being, all at once. It is surrendering to the unknown, accepting that there are no right answers—only sensations, presences, and sometimes, absences.
Love is an act of courage and, at times, of stubbornness. It feels as if love glances at me sideways, waiting to be unraveled, while I, out of fear or defiance, step back. It does not judge me, yet I judge myself. I try to understand: what is this deep yearning that unsettles me? Why, in its presence, do I feel both whole and incomplete? Love seems to be the acceptance that we will never be entirely complete, but for a moment, that incompleteness makes sense.
And so, I wonder: is love surrender or loss? The idea of losing myself in someone else frightens me. Losing my boundaries, my definition, my individuality. But perhaps, within that surrender, there is also a kind of gain—not the gain of possession, but of exchange, of creation. It is not that someone else will fill my gaps, but that together, we will form new ways of existing.
Ah, love has its cruel side too. Because it insists on revealing our vulnerabilities—the parts of ourselves we would rather keep hidden. To love is to hold a mirror to the soul and see not only what we are, but also what we are not. And yet, despite this exposure, we continue to desire. We crave the gaze that embraces us, the touch that confirms our existence, the silence that speaks more than words ever could.
Clarice Lispector once wrote, "Love is far more fatal than death." Perhaps because love is a kind of daily rebirth. It is waking up to the possibility of becoming something greater, of expanding beyond ourselves. But to do so, we must die a little—die to certainty, to our defenses, to the fear of feeling.
Love also lives in the details. In the barely noticeable gesture of holding the door open, in the coffee made at just the right time, in the smile that arrives unannounced. It is in these small acts that love becomes grand. It does not need grand declarations or eternal vows. Love exists in simply being together, in allowing ourselves to be seen, even on the days we would rather hide.
And so, I reflect: do we truly know how to love, or are we merely trying? Perhaps love is not something to be mastered but something that forever slips through our grasp—like sand between our fingers. We try to hold onto it, but it spreads, and in doing so, it changes us.
Today, I do not know if I understand love, but I feel that it understands me. It does not ask me to be perfect—only to be. It does not demand that I have all the answers—only that I dare to ask.
And in the end, perhaps that is love: a safe space where we can both lose and find ourselves. A place where words do not need to be complete, where silence speaks louder than a thousand phrases.
Love, after all, is both what brings us together and what sets us apart—because in loving, we are forced to recognize that we are two, distinct and independent, yet for some mysterious reason, we choose to walk side by side.
Today, I choose to love. Not because I understand it, but because I feel that, in some inexplicable way, love understands me. And in the end, that is all I can ask for.
Laura
