Is there an airport nearby… or is that just my heart taking off?

As I skim through newspapers spouting the daily, predictable news warning the plight of humanity, I become overwhelmed with the injustice of it all and the general triumph of evil.

There is an endless list of things people are not doing to improve life. Any optimistic attempt at progress or change is trampled by the sheer magnitude of our failings.

And yet we wake up over and over again, we continue to struggle for life and our existence regardless of all crises; we fight to be here for a reason and that reason is love.

Love means so many different things at varying times for so many people.

Love can extend from blood relationships or it can be shared platonically.

Romantic love sometimes develops over time, or sparks immediately. You can fall deeply, passionately in love for a lifetime whereas others might fall to the crutches of love for only a fleeting moment.

I don’t intend to take precedence over one or the other because for me love, just as it is, is it.

At times there are people you come across that are irreplaceable, they leave an impression on your life and connect with you on a deeply unique level.

This is what makes human relationships so fundamental to happiness, the select group of people exclusive to your experience; it is why death can be so frightening and loss so painful.

Platonic love is the most beautiful kind of love; it tends to not be victim to possessive desires, nor does it require the immediacy, reassurance and attention of romantic love.

It’s acceptable to have many platonic loves at once and throughout life, people are not required to promise love or commitment to their parents, children or closest friends, it just is.

We also don’t have to worry whether or not things are still spicy and heated in the bedroom over the years or whether we feel sexually attracted to someone we have seen in every unattractive situation life could possibly present.

Nevertheless, I do strongly believe that romantic love, what some call lust, is a magnificent wonder.

I have told a close friend, more then once, that getting to see her fall in love for the first time will be like watching someone eat the best dessert on the planet they couldn’t possibly comprehend.

Though, I have been witness to copious amount of advice on romantic love; people attempting to define it, to control it, to make rules to it.

There are so many rules to relationships embedded in society; accepted notions about who to love, when to love, cheating, gender, age, money, fighting, passion, sex, compatibility and the list is infinite.

Everyone wants their love to fit in a perfect box, everyone wants that forever love where no one gets hurt, where they get the life they had always imagined.

When it is not actualized, which is more likely then not, it becomes a failure; it becomes something that has to be fixed rather then just being accepted as reality.

There are no secret ingredients to everlasting love. No matter how hard you try to pace it appropriately, to master the right mixture of personality traits or to do what is “right,” it is impossible to safeguard yourself from heartbreak or failure.

Love is impossibly difficult and complicated; marriage, common law or children do not solve the puzzle either, as much as people try to make it so.

The reality is that no one knows how to make a good relationship, those who have one are simply at the mercy of time and sheer dumb luck.

But this is the greatness of love , no matter how hard it gets or how deteriorating it can be, we cannot live without it and somehow, it is worth every ounce of effort.

Love will never imply happiness, nor will it solve life’s problems.

Love is often hard and can be lonely and disappointing, but what it comes down to at the end of the day is that life is too short not to take chances, to not take the risk of getting hurt in order to uncover an irreplaceable connection with another human being.