Love Is...

So... how does love feel?  Real love.  Here's what I think love feels like:

• You would do anything for that person without thinking twice
• You would give anything for that person without thinking twice
• You want to be around that person all the time
• Your heart is naturally drawn toward them
• You get some flutters in your heart
• That other person brightens your day just by being around you or talking to you when they can't be near
• You want to show you are thinking of them, care for them, etc.
• You would choose that person over anyone else
• You can't picture your life without that person
• That person makes you smile that deep beautiful smile without even trying
• You want to show them love in the traditional sense... hugs, kisses, and so forth...

I found this list online for love too that I think is great.
http://pure-essence.net/fun/cute-and-fun/you-know-its-love-when/

I like this point from that list best:

"Remember that you don’t choose love. LOVE CHOOSES YOU. All you can really do is accept it for all its mystery when it comes into your life. Feel the way it fills you to overflowing, then reach out and give it away. Give it back to the person who brought it alive in you. Give it to others who deem poor in spirit. Give it to the world around you in anyway you can. This is where many lovers go wrong. Having been so long without love, they understand love only as a need. They see their hearts as empty places that will be filled by love, and they begin to look at love as something that flows to them rather than from them. Remember this, and keep it to your heart. Love has its own time, its own seasons, and its own reason for coming and going. You cannot bribe it or coerce it, or reason it into staying. You can only embrace it when it arrives and give it away when it comes to you. But if it chooses to leave from your heart or from the heart of your lover, there is nothing you can do and there is nothing you should do."

The Origin of Love

Thanks to Sara for pointing me to this.

When the earth was still flat
And clouds made of fire
And mountains stretched up to the sky
Sometimes higher
Folks roamed the earth like big rolling kegs
They had two sets of arms
They had two sets of legs
They had two faces peering
Out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them
As they talked; while they read
And they never knew nothing of love
It was before the origin of love
The origin of love

And there were three sexes then,
One that looked like two men
Glued up back to back
Called the children of the sun
And similiar in shape and girth
Was the children of the earth
They looked like two girls rolled up in one
And the children of the moon
Were like a fork stuck on a spoon
They were part sun, part earth, part daughter, part son
The origin of love

Now the gods grew quite scared
Of our strength and defiance
And Thor said "I'm gonna kill them all with my hammer
Like I killed the giants"
But the Zeus said "No
You better let me use my lightning like scissors
Like I cut the legs off the whales
Dinosaurs into lizards"
Then he grabbed up some bolts
And he let out a laugh
Said "I'll split them right down the middle
Gonna cut them right up in half"
And the storm clouds gathered above
Into great balls of fire.

And then fire shot down from the sky in bolts
Like shining blades of a knife
And it ripped right through the flesh
Of the children of the sun and the moon
And the earth
And some Indian god sewed the wound up
Into a hole
Pulled it 'round to our bellies
To remind us the price we pay
And Osiris and the gods of the nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane
To scatter us away
in a flood of wind and rain
And a sea of tidal waves
To wash us all away
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again
We'll be hopping around on one foot
And looking through one eye

Last time I saw you
We just split in two
You was looking at me
I was looking at you
You had a way so familiar
But I could not recognize
'cause you had blood in your face
And I had blood in my eyes
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine
That's the pain
That cuts a straight line down through the heart
We call it love
We wrapped our arms around each other
Trying to shove ourselves back together
We were making love
Making love
It was a cold dark evening such a long time ago
When by the mighty hand of Jove
It was a sad story how we became
Lonely two-legged creatures
It's the story
The origin of love
That's the origin of love.

Soul Mates

I've been thinking about relationships a lot lately, and the concept of a soul mate keeps popping to mind.  But what really is a soul mate?  Do they really exist?  Or is it just one of those concepts we tell ourselves to give hope to love?  I've gone back and forth on this myself, mostly depending on my emotional stance on relationships and love in general.  When I feel good about the idea of love I enjoy believing in soul mates.  When I feel bad or discouraged by love, I feel there couldn't be soul mates.  However, my own feeling of this doesn't change reality.

Wikipedia (the great source for all knowledge) describes soul mates as follows:

"A soulmate or soul mate is a person with whom one has a feeling of deep and natural affinity, love, intimacy, sexuality, spirituality, and/or compatibility. A related concept is that of the twin flame or twin soul – which is thought to be the ultimate soulmate, the one and only other half of one's soul, for which all souls are driven to find and join."

Okay... so you have a deep connection with a person.  Does that mean they are your soul mate?  If we go by the "twin flame" definition, does this mean you only have one soul mate? 

I think that we can have a semi-deep (maybe deep in some areas, but not all) connection with lots of people.  This could mean you have a physical connection to go along with this, but not necessarily.  I have lots of friends who I feel a deep connection with in some very important areas of my life yet there is no physical connection to tie in with that.  That does not make it any less important or real.  The last two people I dated I felt varying degrees of semi-deep connections with.  Neither held a full-deep connection, but they were strong enough in enough areas that the physical connection came along with that naturally.

A soul mate type of deep connection I think would be different than this.  For one, I think it would be a deep connection in most or maybe even all areas of your life and beliefs.  None of it would be forced either.  You wouldn't have to pretend to connect on some level, it would all come naturally.  And this doesn't necessarily mean you agree on everything either.  Things where you disagree would be things you can mutually respect and understand the other's view point even with not agreeing.  Secondly, I think a soul mate would have a natural ability to see into the other person's soul.  Natural ability to understand and relate, see through walls built up around your heart for protection.  See through the daily masks everyone wears to fit in, do their job, get through the day.

"One story about soulmates, presented by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, is that humans originally consisted of four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces, but Zeus feared their power and split them all in half, condemning them to spend their lives searching for the other half to complete them:

[Primeval man] could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was when he wanted to run fast …Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods ... Doubt reigned in the celestial councils. Should they kill them and annihilate the race with thunderbolts, as they had done the giants, then there would be an end of the sacrifices and worship which men offered to them; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to be unrestrained. At last, after a good deal of reflection, Zeus discovered a way. He said: 'I have a plan which will humble their pride and improve their manners; men shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength and increased in numbers; this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg.'

—Aristophanes, Plato’s Symposium"

Now, I think it could be possible to have multiple soul mates out in the world.  But there are far less soul mates available than people you could just have a semi-deep connection with.  For that reason I don't think everyone finds their soul mate, or one of their soul mates.  It's easier to settle for a non-soul mate.  Once you have invested in someone it's hard to let that go for the possibility of meeting your soul mate some day.  And this isn't always a bad thing.  Lots of people who seem to be oddly matched have great lives together, wonderful families and create beautiful memories together.

Right now, I believe in soul mates.  I am holding out for mine.

<3