Modern Romanticism

Love is not an emotion. If love is said to “conquer all”, then if it were an emotion, such a saying would refer love to conquering itself. What love conquers is what’s momentary, fleeting, and bound up more within lust over what’s timeless. All emotions pass, as they are feelings, not states of being. In fact, what a person feels is due to the process of human connection, pertaining to love in this regard, and the feelings that do stay are because love doesn’t die even when who or what was loved has perished.

Love, itself, is not an emotion, though all the emotions wrapped around it are like its decorations. Some remain where they are, some are replaced with other ones, while others are added onto it to bring it more intricacy. When someone or something that was loved has perished, a person feels the common emotions of grief, such as disappointment, rage, sadness, etc. because the core of all those emotions is the state of love. The act of love conquering these negative emotions from grief is under the idea of appreciating what was, rather than mourning over what didn’t go on. As it is life or even an object that has been humanized that a human being will love, it is time that eventually overcomes the living or the humanized object. At some point, that life or humanized object will grow old and find its eternal bed within the earth. However, as love perseveres, love remembers what was good about who or what was loved. When love conquers the negative emotions, the result is good feelings or pleasant memories brought up in the thought of who or what was loved.

Love is not meant to be thought of as an emotion because, unlike emotions, love hangs on without its replacement. Love can indeed be twisted into hatred, though it was love that began such hatred or bitterness towards someone who betrayed them. People remember those who are “gone”, in whatever way, through differing mindsets. If someone is bitter because of what was lost, their fixation is on loved life’s disappearance itself. If someone appreciates what was good about what they found before it was lost, they’ll remember the lost life for what it was, as life, within their own life. Remaining life won’t find peace outside of grief in remembrance of how life died. Instead, it will find peace from remembering how life lived for what’s appreciated to have any meaning. Love conquers the negative emotions from grief to allow the positive emotions of who or what is continued to be loved to fuel remaining life’s fire. Remaining life ought to live, as remaining life ought to move; this isn’t called “moving on by way of forgetting”, but it is called “moving forward with something to remember that nurtures the life that remains.”

There are many ways that life can be conquered or destroyed, as it’s always only a matter of time until that happens. Time is life’s weakness, though it is never a weakness of love. Love is what’s timeless, even when someone doesn’t want it to be.