When googled, the word love used as a noun is defined as: (1) an intense feeling of deep affection, (2) a great interest and pleasure in something, (3) a person or thing that one loves, and (4) a score of zero in certain sports. As a verb, love is a feeling of deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone. What is a thesis about love without discussing the difference between unconditional and conditional love? Simply put, to love unconditionally means to accept wholeheartedly, and to love conditionally means to accept partly, with perhaps a sure hope for change. The word love is often used to express an emotion loosely. Like other emotions, the intensity of one’s love varies depending on external factors that may or may not be in his or her control. To say “I love you” is meaningless because actions usually speak louder than words. Yet sometimes hearing those words evoke meanings within the recipient, and whether he or she appreciated it or not is not up to you or that person; it is entirely up to life. 

When people fall in love, the world is not so black and white. It is a mixture of an ugly yet shimmering grey that one’s mind cannot help but pay attention to. In an instant, the world from one’s perspective is ready to accept another. That someone, a stranger, suddenly becomes special. Slowly, thoughts and memories of that person would occasionally come to one’s mind. What is that person doing right now? When will you see that person again? How attractive he or she had seemed in your eyes the first time you saw that person. Would that person have noticed me in the large crowd that we shared? Or have I become a hopeless case of unrequited love? One might say that the first love brings the most pain, either by having your heart broken into pieces due to rejection or by having to love a person and not being able to express that love because of our insecurities and self-doubts. It was at this point that a person became more assertive, more determined, and a little bit wiser. One then learned that in life, loving is not enough. For men, it is better to be handsome and rich. For women, it is better to be beautiful and desirable.     

Emotions often make people irrational, and their decisions can sometimes be suboptimal, as these emotions influence them. When making any decisions, the ideal strategy is to consider the short-term and long-term effects of that decision based on your reservoirs of knowledge and data. I am not a cold person nor a robot. People like me feel deeply, but sometimes one cannot allow emotions to deter them from making the best decision, even if it is the hardest thing they must do at that moment.  

Love is an abstract concept because no one can love another more than they love themselves. You cannot truly love someone else unless you love yourself first. No person is better than another person at giving or receiving love. There will always be someone smarter, better looking, richer, kinder, meaner, dumber, or poorer than you. Relatively, it is how one views oneself and how one assumes others may perceive him or her. Ultimately, we all strive to do our best to help ourselves and our families. The following diagrams are models that any person can fall under based on our experiences with pain. To love and to hate are two emotions that form a polar spectrum, shaping our identity. Thus, one may find that their identity may change as they gain more experience in life. The shaded heart symbolizes the stranger we fall in love with or the one that we choose to be our lifelong friend. The white heart is an integer of past lovers or others who have caused us pain. The model assumed that all individuals desire a romantic partner at some point in their lives, except those who are obligated by religious, institutional, or political reasons. The first model suggested an identity where an individual prioritizes their lover, in addition to family, friends, interests, financial concerns, and sexual needs. Thus, this individual does not value people in general, nor those who have hurt them in the past. The second model suggests an identity where an individual prioritizes their lover, alongside family, friends, interests, money, sex, and other people. This individual only dismissed people who had hurt them in the past. The third model suggests an identity where an individual prioritizes their lover above all else and does not hold grudges against those who have hurt them in the past. Thus, each model corresponds to an identity that any person can develop at any point in their lifetime.

Everyone suffers personal pain and hardships, regardless of their current circumstances. But there’s one pain that we all share, and that is the pain we receive when we are hurt by others at any given point in our lifetime, whether from a stranger, from someone we idolize, or from a loved one. I find that some of the kindest people are the oldest because they have been through it all. Or perhaps they have been through the most pain. As people age, some of us learn to forgive and forget, while others hold onto that pain because it has become the fuel that makes us stronger, the one that keeps us going to survive. One started to form an identity and surrounded us with those who shared the same mindsets, because those people brought us joy instead of pain. Regardless of what one’s mission may be, at the finish line, some of us forget that in the end, we are all human.