Cliche

A few months ago, I propped one leg over the other with hands in my jacket. With my head falling back, I stared at the fluorescent lights camouflaged to the glare of the 6am sunrise by John F. Kennedy Airport. In an hour, I would be boarding a plane to Tampa and I have no idea why I was doing it. In one day, I will be sleeping in who knows where. In six weeks, I will be back and I will have no idea what has changed. What do I want, I asked myself. After I weaved in a tapestry of naps, people watching, and deep thought, I came upon the conclusion that I wanted to know what love is. Suddenly feeling like a broken record by the Foreigners, I stripped myself of every click flick memory, my childhood scars from Liz, Vic, and Hannah, and moved forward into a world where the word, "love," could be defined.

I just searched Dictionary.com and apparently, there are 10 different definitions of love. And I can barely understand what three of them are talking about. And with those three, I am wondering if I have ever felt that. I'd rather learn some neuroscience than to figure out what love is. But in the midst of long, awkward conversations, and severe trial and error mistakes, I think that I might have a clue.

(Conversation between unmarried couple)
Yih: Why do you love him?
X: He understands me, listens to me, funny, laidback, and ambitious.

(Conversation between newlyweds)
Yih: Why do you love him?
X: ....smiles....he's perfect. I mean, we go through our arguments and everything, but it is such a great adventure.

(Conversation between middle aged couple)
Yih: Why do you love him?
X: Who said I love him? Haha, I'm just kidding. We made a commitment. He's my husband. It's been quite the journey...reminisces....good times.

(Conversation between old couple)
Yih: Why do you love him?
X: Yih....who else would I love?

Through the stories and facial expressions and the things unsaid, I feel a steady progression to what true love is. As a young college student, I get asked, "Why do you love her?" And automatically, I feel pressure to say every good quality about that person and why they match up with me. This pressure eats at me and makes me doubt my own heart and suddenly, I become a lawyer beneath the Supreme Court as The People of Love vs. Yih. I don't know! I just do! Sometimes, you just do! That never seems to be the right response, so I sulk back into my empty full size bed, and wonder when this love feeling will ever come by.

But I'm starting to discover that love has almost nothing to do with what she does. It's about who she is. But doesn't what she do define who she is? Maybe. But I look to the only source of love that I know is true. God is love. God loves me. I reject him on a daily basis, and it seems that no matter what I do, he is constantly on my pursuit to make me His because he knows that is the best for me. I read through Hosea and his love and pursuit over an adulterous wife is possibly one of the most captivating stories one has ever read. And it is this ultimate commitment and crusade to pursue and love is what captures our hearts. Well, it is the thing that ultimately captures mine. So love is many things, but at its core, is not commitment one of its main things? There is something incredibly heartwarming about Rudy, committed to his love of football. There is something about the woman in Love Actually who rejects love from a man to take care of his mentally retarted brother. There is something about Noah in The Notebook, and despite his drunken activities, his committment to Allie to her death is indescribable. There is something about my dad who does not ever kiss my mom in public, but will always call my mom 4:30pm on the dot everyday for the past 17 years. Commitment sounds lame, drawn out, boring, and academic. But if fueled by passion, it also has an incredible potential to drive and inspire. I feel just a little bit inspired.

So I love you.

The scary part about defining love is that you can't really use that word lightly anymore. I begin to stutter when I even try to mention that word. And I guess since God is love, and Yahweh is love, and Yahweh wasn't supposed to be spoken, maybe love shouldn't be spoken either, or at least that often. The discovery of love's meaning also causes me to realize that I actually do not love that many people. They are definitely in the single digits, but it is nice to know who are those that you truly care about, who you truly have in your heart, who you truly love when the Motown songs drift away into my sleep.

But let me make a clarification between the comparison of love between God and His people with the love between me and someone else. God loves us and therefore wants to be fully satisfied, but we are only fully satisfied if we are with Him. Therefore, his pursuit is to make us His. That does not apply with me. You can love someone and not marry them. In fact, it may contradict the very definition of love if I believed I should. Therefore, another key factor of love that has peered its stick head out of the ground is to "let go." And then, that's the hard part. "I love you" = "I will make you mine." Putting that line through the equal sign may be the toughest part of loving as a human. So in all of this mess, I must ask myself, "Will I still love you if you leave and I will never see you again?" "Will I still love you if you go for a dude that I think is a jerk or worse, that is my best friend?" "Will I still love you if you made me to never watch actions films and force me to eat celery on a daily basis?"

So I still love you.

"Will you be my love poem?"-By Poetri

Will you be my love poem?
Will you be verses on paper that add up to nothing
trying to describe how I feel around you.
Will you be words jumbled up like speed bumps
trying to slow my heart down from racing to you at full speed,
will you be my poem to try to explain my emotions.

At a poetry reading
when someone ask me to read a Love poem,
can I just call you up and have you smile
joke around or whatever with the audience.
Cause once they see you and hear the light and personality
coming out of your mouth, they will only half understand what I'm talking about,
but it at least will be a start and they will go home thinking,
that was the best love poem that they've ever heard.

I'm asking you to be my love poem.
You don't have to change or anything.
I'm not asking you to marry me.
I just want you to stay being who you are.
I'm asking you to be patient with me,
cause I'm not good at relationships,
then again who is?

I'm asking you to envision being the best thing
that has happened to a person...then think of me
and know that is what you are to me.
I'm asking you to remember all the passionate poems
you've ever heard and combine them into the largest,
most wonderfullest, goodest, bestest love poem
then imagine me reading this poem to you.
One time in front of thousands of people
to testify how good God is for introducing us,
the other million times alone in front of you
to testify what you mean to me.
No matter how many times I read it, however,
just know it will be only the half of it,
cause there are no words to explain you,
my love poem!