What is love about?

"Only when love is a duty, only then is love eternally secured against any change, eternally liberated in blessed independence; eternal and fortunately protected against despair."
Søren Kierkegaard


According to Scriptures we must love each other as we love ourselves, even our enemies. I spent a long time wondering how could that be possible. Now, I understand it: love is not about feelings, is not about sensations that come and go. It is a decision you make and a decision you choose to keep every day of the rest of your life. Or not.

If you choose to love your enemies you will do whatever you can to make their lives better, even though you do not "feel" afection for them. I think this goes in the same way with a relative you are not a big found, but you know you have to show some respect. Or, when your mother-in-low is a pain in the ass, but you know she is important for someone you love so you choose treat her with the same respect you treat your own mother. I believe this is real love.

When it comes to love between men and woman it is hard not to think about the Prince if you are a woman. The only problem is that princes are great in dreamns, but in real life we just have to get used to the idea that they do not exist.

Romance is good and I love it. I love when my heart despares because I forgot to breathe and the palms of my hands get wet with sweat just because the prince of my dreamns is entering the room. I just love when I realize his eyes are searching for me and when his lips form the most beautiful smile I have ever seen becase he has found me. I love the way he greets me and I really love the way he says my name.

The first time I met the prince I was 15 years old and he became a frog after I discovered he had found his princess and the princes was not me. But I met other princes after that and the sensations were always the same, and the dreamns didnt change so much. The only thing that kept changing was the prince, even though each new time I was sure that I have found the right one.

Im not 15 anymore. Im about to become a 23 years old woman and I still dream about the prince, always trying to make people fit into the image I built when I was still a kid and dint know anything about commitment, love, or duty.

What I like most about the prince is the way he makes me feel about myself. He really makes me believe I can be somebody else. The person I wish I was, but Im not. He makes me fell that the wolrd is mine and that all my childwish dreams will one day come true. He also makes me believe that I am his entire world and that he will live his life in order to please me.

But the truth is that this prince does not exist and love is far more then dreamns. Love is commitment, is hard work, is decision and requires a lot of pacience and sometimes we also have to give up of our own individual dreams so that the other person can keep walking with us. Love is not easy, because even when the feelings are not there, you still have to deal with a second person that still wants be loved and cared.

When Kierkegaard says that when love is as a duty it can free us from dispair I keep wondering if this dispair has to do with the fact that the human heart is selfish and is never happy. Is this dispair related to the fact the we always want to follow feelings? The kind of dispair that can make us forget about values and duties and keeping chasing dreams that will never come true? Because when they finally come, they will not be dreams anymore, which means we have to start chasing something else...

Can the way I love my enemy be the same way I love the person I intend to spend the rest of my life with?