The Use of the Word Love

Six months after I met a young man, he expressed to me how much he loved me. Being sixteen years old, I thought it to be very flattering but I could not accept him saying this to me. The word, love in the romantic sense, is something that would take so much out of me to say to a person. Love is something that you express to someone that you can not, in any way, see living your life without. The last time I saw the young man who supposedly loved me, was on my seventeenth birthday when he told me I was a waste of his time. Love is the strongest emotion and most powerful word anyone can say to someone else. Some people use the word love everyday as though it is not as big of a deal as it really is. <br><br>Jewel's song, "Always," illustrates a definition of love. The first line of the song totally defines love in the same way I do with, "Please don't say 'I love you,' those words touch me much too deeply." With this one line, my entire definition of love is presented. <br><br>There are other things people can love: a pet, family members, certain kinds of food but these are all loved by a different kind of love. There are millions of ways you can love, but this kind of love does not happen all the time to a person. It is the kind of love that is not there at the beginning, but grows inside you. This kind of love is for another person that you can not see your life without, even though at one time it was without that person. To express this to someone is to propose to commit your life to that other person. The other person may not feel the same way and that is why it is hard to accept someone saying that. One expressing their love to another is the greatest compliment one could ever receive for they are wanted in someone else's life forever.<br><br>There are some people that do not understand the meaning of love and use it all the time as though it was just some word that makes people happy. The young man who told me he loved me also told me a month later that I was a waste of his time. He is an example of someone using the word just to make others or even himself happy. I watched the soap opera, "Sunset Beach," and every other character is telling someone else how much they love them, but they also change who they love on a weekly basis. I also watched a character ask her husband if he would just learn to love her. There is no way that someone could learn to love anyone when love is an emotion that is already inside a person but does not come out until one finds someone they really love. This representation of love is so misleading that some people may never know what love is really like for they are deceived by television shows like this. I also watched the movie, "Titanic," which was referred to as one of the greatest love stories ever. The character of "Rose" is in love with another man who she is about to marry. She then meets "Jack" and she no longer knows if she loves her fiancee for this new man seems so much better. No one could possibly grow love for another after only knowing each other for a day. This is another misleading representation of love where people will begin to think that someone that made them happy is the love of their life. This movie would be a great love story if something like this was possible but for something that is immensely fiction, it is something nice to watch, not to believe in. Due to love being the greatest compliment, everybody wants to experience it at least one time in their life. Some people take it however they can, where others are almost incapable of it. The way Jewel defines love in her song is the way people should think of love: as words that touch one too deeply. Love is not something to try to rush into, for everyone will experience love sometime in their life. Those that do not understand what love really is and express to anyone that they love them, will be stuck in a dream world that is supported by soap operas and fictional movies. If one does not go out looking to love, then they may possibly find their love that they would do anything to be with.