Blog 21: Love Is All Around You

Love is all around you. You are surrounded by love. Love is watching the people around you love. Love is having people that you can trust and rely on. Friends are love. Love can look like a lot of different things and it can take on many different forms. You don’t have to be in love to feel love. Love isn’t strictly confined by the depths of romanticism. It’s not dependent on being in love. Many of us have falsely fabricated this idea of love in our heads. We’ve convinced ourselves that love equates to this ideal romanticized version of partnership rarely seen out of romance novels and movies. When in reality, that is not the case. Love can be anything and everything that surrounds you. You can sense it from hundreds of different people and not just romantically. I find love from hundreds of different people every day, and a hundred different things. Every single person I’m surrounded by, they add a bit to the love that I feel. All my friends from all over the world add a bit. My family, my acquaintances, my dogs, etc. Every day, they show me that I am surrounded by love. So instead of one main piece in the middle of the jigsaw of love, it loads little pieces. A large fraction of my life is made up of little bits. And if you look for it, love actually is all around you. These little bits aren't particularly small. My identity as an individual is shaped by many things that may seem insignificant at first. Some things are so common that you may not even realize how much they equate to love in your daily life. Things such as a visit to your favorite coffee shop or reading a book. That’s love. These minuscule things fit into my life (my jigsaw) and suddenly I’m full of pieces. Pieces of my being, the core of who I am is this big puzzle that is composed of an almost overwhelming amount of love. Oftentimes, when we view the romanticized concept of love, we struggle to see the other aspects of love we are all facing each day. Despite not being in love, I witness love often. The love I feel around me, whether it's through the people or the things that make me who I am, has a way of making me feel whole. I am love. You are love. We’re all love. Featuring a number of pieces that are carefully crafted to fit a being such as yourself. Similarly, I am nothing without love, just as I am nothing without air. Love is a part of us all and we will always be loved. Whether we realize that or not.