Why do we talk about love when it really means happiness?

 I always enjoyed spending time with my grandmother, a wise person that helped me to understand that life is a great gift, something we have to believe in and that we need to treasure every moment of our lives. She used to tell me stories about people who tried to be happier, who grew up and became better people. Those stories accompanied me for a long time, until I was able to choose my own way of life. When I’m sad, I occasionally think about those stories because they make me feel good and capable of overcoming any obstacle. When I do, I feel the words of my grandmother sounding in my head and my heart, helping me to solve all the troubles that arise in my everyday life.

So the years have gone by and I have learned to value those things that are really important and one of the most important things that guides our ephemeral lives is love. I’ve realised that we can find love in many situations that make us feel good and if those situations, furthermore, can make us smile, then we are completely happy. My own way of living this life involves equating love and happiness. That way we can feel love (and therefore happiness) through the words that a mother tells her children when they are crying and she wants to comfort them, or in the tender look between an elderly couple. Love is when we’re conscious that our partner is here although we can’t see him, when thinking about our partner makes us smile, when our mate share his dreams with us and when our tears start to slide down our cheek because he tells us that we’re the most important person in his life, when a caress of our partner makes us vibrate. Love is when we’re sad and the words of a friend calm our pain, when we close our eyes and imagine that we’re lying in a field of poppies, when we’re sitting in a lonely and remote lighthouse and our gaze is fading away to the horizon and we’re aware that we have so much life to live, when we see the happy face of our parents right after they have received a surprise. We feel love when a puppy puts its head on our knees, when a needy little girl is smiling while she is collecting brightly-coloured flowers, when an elderly woman is grateful for being helped to cross the street. Love is when each of us can help others to be happier, when we are walking down the street and an unknown person smiles at us, when we finally solve those problems that worried us, when we realise that we are capable of getting over our fears. Love is when our mate hugs us softly, when we fall asleep on the sofa and our partner covers us with a white blanket, when the fragrance of his skin incites the senses. 

Love is unconditional, interested, fraternal, passionate, unhealthy, indulgent, pure, capricious, sad, unfair, complicated, perfidious, innocent, human, gentle, warm, familial, pleasant, honest, furtive, patient, hot, unpredictable, blind, impossible, painful, unforgettable, imaginary, unconscious, romantic, insatiable, wild, crazy... There are as many kinds of love as there are people living on the Earth.

These are some of the important things that I learnt from my grandmother. Speaking of love, the last words I told her before she died were “I love you”. And once again I thought that without love, there is no glory… 

Uinen