Defining True Love

How exactly does one even begin to define the term ‘love’? Is love a thing? An action? A feeling? A choice? Being as complex as it is, love has taken on many forms these days whether it is shown through people, animals, food, or a hobby. Throughout the years, culture has begun to shape and mold a certain perception of love and has started to push his or her own idea of what love should look like upon each and every individual. Through recent production of certain movies, books, and songs, people have started to adopt this certain perception that the culture has put forward and has completely trashed whatever opinion they had about true love because they assume that the world’s knowledge of love must be greater than one’s own beliefs. What many individuals tend to forget is that the movies, books, and songs that they see, hear, and read about are almost always fiction. In turn, the media makes the love they portray to be fiction as well. In other words, people should not be striving towards this certain romance being illustrated by Hollywood actors when it is only a false, unrealistic fantasy of a certain individual’s view on love and what they wish they could experience themselves. Looking towards what culture has to say about love, individuals have slowly but surely, started to abandon their view of true love and what it truly means to love someone else. True love isn’t about the “fairytale ending,” although some may be fortunate enough to attain such romance. The most true and honest love is about two people coming together and making a choice to respect one another and accept them as they are even with all of the baggage, flaws, and shortcomings they may bring into the relationship. Having a perfectly flawless love story is simply unattainable and must be accepted in order to love someone else to ones fullest capacity. Best expressed by Sam Keen, “You come to love not by finding the perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” The most

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