Love generally is associated with warm summery feelings of happiness and satisfaction. The very thought of it itself induces warmth and happiness within us. It fills us to the brim, it is the force that drives us, gives us a reason to live. It changes us, for the better and makes us do that which we thought was impossible. A generally selfish man would become sacrificing and hardworking to ensure the future of his child. A probably cowardly man would rise up to defend nations if so driven, for the love of his country. A ‘Romeo’ would do whatever it takes to secure his ‘Juliet’.
Then there is that love which stems from gratitude. Say that a person suffering from a terminal illness and is unable to find sufficient funds for the surgery. Then he finds that there is a fund set apart for people just like him, suffering from the illness and then that changes his life. Wouldn’t he be grateful for it? Wouldn’t he then set up a charity to help people suffering from that illness to change their lives giving them all that support that they needed, financial or otherwise? Imagine that in a third world country where children are suffering and they have no proper facilities, and then out of the blue comes this organization to dig up a functioning well, to ensure proper water supply. Wouldn’t one such kid there be ever so affected to be driven to change the world?
That, I guess is what it does to people. We become so different that we don’t even recognize ourselves; we look back and realize just how much we had changed due to love affecting us in our lives.
But then, there is also a kind of love that is toxic. A kind that just ruins two people and everyone around them, yet they hang on to it. They nurture that love at the cost of everything they have and just keep pouring into it until it ruins them both and they are left with nothing.
