Somewhere, in the winding corridors of my heart, I know that there is a pearl. In this pearl there is a repository of all the things I find myself lacking - there is a wealth of compassion, of sagacity, of constancy. Most importantly, constancy. I am the last person to argue that unquestioning loyalty is the hallmark of all virtues, but maybe because of this very fact, I admire those who can keep an informed yet unflinching faith in the things they choose to hold onto. Because we do choose. In daily life, we often say, "I couldn't help it, I had to do it", or "Before I knew it, it happened". With these phrases, we can shrug off responsibility and blame things on happenstance or "fate", and then store them in the dusty recesses of things forgotten. Decisions are a lot easier when they become the natural consequences of indecision. Why choose, when someone or something can choose for you?

We might as will ask, why love, when someone can do the loving for you?

Naturally, no one can love for us. We love on our own, whimsically, arbitrarily, intensely. I love Proust and Mendelssohn and Boggle. And coconuts, but only in Mounds bars. All of these things, I love naturally and unquestioningly, the only rational reason being that they bring me joy (and not of the almond variety). So of course, no one can love for us - we must do the loving on our own, we must choose to love in order to be in love. So why, then, does "falling in love" always seem a compulsion? Why does it always seem beyond our control, completely irrational, consisting of only feeling, feeling, feeling? The answer seems obvious - of course it's because falling in love IS all of those things. At its core, it is FEELING - in bold, bright capitals, because how else would it bring us such unfettered bliss? With love, we don't have to think. We touch, we taste, we smell, and then we love. Sure, there are philosophical, enlightening, bantering conversations in between. And there are tears and there are raging words. But all of that is peripheral. What is palpable, what is tangible that we can feel is what we call our love for the other person. We might have reasons for where this love stems from, but at its core, it is "just" love. Why define it? Why give it contours and a shape when it's just a substance, something that both encompasses and is encompassed depending on mood and circumstance? Maybe we strive so hard to define and contain love because that is the only way we feel that we can grasp it and hold onto it. Because when love has a shape, when love has reasons, it seems infinitely more concrete, infinitely more true.

But truth isn't what I want. I want authenticity, and authenticity doesn't always come with honesty. There's that one saying, "honest is easy, fiction is where genius lies". And genius, genius is what defines love. Genius isn't only a momentary spark, it is a streak of dancing stars. It is what lies behind love, my love. It is the smile that flutters to my lips when I speak of him, the soft sigh that settles in my heart when I hear his voice. So enough dissecting, reasoning, explaining. Why not, for once,

live?

Someone tell me how we begin to fall in love, someone tell me how our hearts cave, someone tell me, why do our hearts change?

I am "a garden bursting into life", I am summer and heat and fire; I am happy. Inexplicably happy.