I was talking to someone the other day about love and what love is or how people think about love.

They sent me this quote:

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."
-Robert A. Heinlein

Tim O'Brien says in "The Things They Carried" that love can be an extremely strong emotion.
Love can be an emotion that makes you never want to be apart from the other.

"...his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered."

But I like this quote from that same author and book more:

"Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones--THAT kind of love."

I do love that quote.
It is so lovely and profound.
I used to feel that way.
And I know that I will feel that way again someday.
I know that I will feel that way again because of the way that I view love.

I believe that love is both an emotion and a choice.
Love can consume you or it can never find you at all.
So, yes, you can feel love, and you can grow to love a person, but you have to choose to follow that emotion.
You have to choose to continue loving someone.

Love is that way in any relationship.
You can choose to follow your emotions, aka your heart, or you can let go of it completely.
It is that way with all relationships.
Families fall apart because a member has chosen to turn their back on love.
Relationships fall apart because members of that relationship choose to give up on what has grown between them and another.

It is all a choice.
Just like this life.
Everything we do is a choice.
God created us, just like the angels, to worship him.
And the only reason we are different from the angels is because God gave us the freedom of choice.
And we choose to continue to love and worship our creator.

So, for the end of this post, I'd just like to say something about love and my choices.
I was just thinking to myself about love and a certain person, and I don't know.
It sort of just clicked.
I'm nervous and scared and worried that all of this will come to nothing, but I know that nothing good comes from hiding in fear.
And I know that the choice is only half of it, and the emotion is required as well.
I have felt sparks of emotion for this person, and it has made me excited and hopeful.