If You Want Lasting Love, You Have To Reinvent What It Means First

We reinvent love by giving it a blank slate; a new beginning, an experience that has the ability to thrive in ways our expectations can’t harm it. We need to forget about the guidelines that have taught us what love is and how we attain it, how we keep it, how we grow it. Love is many different things, and people love in many different ways. The beauty of love is that it is as unique as a fingerprint – it will never be made the same way twice, it will never exist between two people the way it did before, so we cannot anchor it in comparisons, we must let it thrive without boundary.

We reinvent love by giving it a voice, by breathing into it expression and communication. Love needs a celebration of the goodness we find in another human being, in the moments that make our chests pound with excitement and enjoyment. It needs vulnerability, softness, for we live in a world that wants to make love hard, and we allow it to when we withhold how we feel towards others, we allow it to when we let our fear of sensitivity rob our mouth of the words our heart wants to speak. Shout your love from rooftops – do not be scared to express how happy someone makes you feel, let them know that they give you goosebumps, let them know that you want to try again. Feel free within the wild beat that dances within you whenever you are with someone you adore, and let them know that they have created a song within you every chance you get.

We reinvent love by freeing it from instant gratification; by understanding that love is something that takes time and patience, by coming to terms with the fact that being alone is much more productive than sleeping beside the convenient bones of someone who will end up making you feel lonely. It doesn’t matter how many times a day someone texts you, or if they grace you with a like on Instagram – do they take the time to be with you? To hear your problems, your fears, to share theirs with you? Do they take the time to be at your side when you need support, to lift you up when you deserve to be celebrated? It takes ten seconds to send an image, or a sentence, or a like on social media. It takes far much more effort to actually be present in someone’s life; we reinvent love by dedicating ourselves to that.

We reinvent love by choosing it. Your ego isn’t going to make you breakfast in bed; your pride isn’t going to encourage you or wrap you in warm arms on the days you feel like giving up. Yes, things are going to be tough at times. The easy aspect of love is falling into it, but it takes courage to stay in love, it takes fearlessness to commit to love, for love is not easy. Love is chaos, it is a natural disaster that will live inside of you like a cyclone. But at the end of the day love is also the only peace you will ever know. Love is the destroyer, but it is also the inventor; it is the storm, but it is also the shelter, and this is why we must choose it every single morning, this is why we must fight for it and believe in it even on its hardest days.

Read more of Bianca Sparacino’s writing in her new book Seeds Planted in Concrete here.