Love is a feeling lived differently according to age, according to culture and according to the surroundings we live in.
As for age, we all agree that we discover love in the perfect innocence of adolescence and often with someone older than ourselves. The luckier ones will discover these new sensations with a person very nearly their own age, and they will grow up together. Sometimes that first love breaks your heart and leaves you with a bitter taste in your throat: I never want to hear about love again, you will tell yourself.
Cultures, for their part, also shape the perception we have of love. Western culture will take an approach centred on the woman, and African culture will take an ambivalent perspective. These two conceptions will mean that the woman holds more power in one relationship, while in another her place is made relative.
The surroundings we live in often determine, at a level we scarcely suspect, the way we live out our love. That apprehension has its origin in the family, the family being the first setting we have to deal with. And so a woman who comes out of a broken family will tend not to place her partner at the centre of her life because, after all, her mother lived alone well enough and yet managed to raise and bring her up successfully. And a man who comes out of a polygamous family would be tempted to reproduce the model were it not for a high degree of self-awareness: he would have to choose to live a different life. And finally, the young woman who comes out of a family where the parents held firm despite the wounds and the hardships of marriage would be far more resilient and would give everything to live the real "for worse and for better".
In every case, and beyond all these disparities, there stands a truth that imposes itself on each and every one of us and that we only grasp very late, sometimes when we are already married: there is a fundamental difference between loving and choosing to love.
Yes, "I love you" and "I have chosen to love you" are two completely different realities.
The first points to an uncontrolled, unconscious feeling that can seize hold of you and overwhelm you as you take the metro, at the grocery store or on the school benches, or again at the restaurant as you notice the gestures, full of delicacy and elegance, of a young lady or a handsome man.
It is also that feeling which is born after months, after years of friendly meetings and outings. It is the feeling that sets you before the complicated fact that this woman, this man, whom you see from time to time, ends up holding a more important place in your life. Her image has just pierced your heart and you face the obvious: you can no longer be satisfied with seeing this person once in passing. Nor can you bring yourself to be confined to the friend zone. It is time to confess to her the unusual effect she has on you and stirs within you. That is love! And it is powerful. Very powerful.
However, the choice to love is more powerful still. Choosing to love originates in a conscious reflection that concludes with a decision one takes for life, or at the very least for several years. That reflection presupposes that one has taken the time and the trouble to see, to notice, to appreciate, to judge, to weigh, to test, to turn over, to turn over again, to study, to observe, to listen and even, sometimes, to annoy, to exasperate, to betray, to disappoint and then to reassure the other person, and at last to say to oneself "Yes, I choose to love this person!"
In a somewhat poetic vein, we would say:
“ You are not the most beautiful woman I have known, but I choose to love you.
You are not the most educated man I have kept company with, but I choose to love you.
You are not the one who gave me the most beautiful child, but I choose to love you.
You are not the richest man who has courted me, but I choose to love you.
You are not the one who sends me highest into the seventh heaven, but I choose to love you. ”
The beauty of the choice to love is that we are not even obliged to love before taking the decision to love. When you choose to love, it is because the values, the behaviour, the upbringing and above all the mood and the humour of the other person match, or come close to, those of the person you see yourself with for life. At this level it is no longer a matter of that love which gives you butterflies in your heart and leaves you “gaga”. What we are talking about here is a love that speaks and asks the real questions about one’s conception of life, financial choices, the kind of upbringing to give, the pressing challenges, religious values, and so on.
And, on the subject of asking the real questions, it must be said that the choice to love can lead in either direction. In my life I have already met people madly in love who, for one reason or another (a different religion, distance or social rank), chose not to turn that feeling into a relationship. Conversely, we know couples who came together on the absence of feelings in one or both of them at the start, and yet that person fell in love some time afterwards. That is what choosing to love means.
For this Valentine’s Day, if you want to play the long game, when he or she says to you "I love you", answer “Yes, but now I want you to choose to love me”.
Choosing to love means putting an energy and a strength of consciousness into that love so that it carries you through wind and tide. By extrapolation, think of choosing to do everything you are going to accomplish, and you will see the difference.
Instead of working, choose to work.
Instead of living, choose to live.
Instead of giving, choose to give.
Instead of leaving, choose to leave.
And instead of loving, truly choose to love.
M. Z.
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