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Lately, I’ve been receiving hate mail from people who dislike my cynicism, so I’ll start with someone else’s to address the most dangerous topic this column has ever ventured upon: Love.

In the words of junior English major Kimberly Konwinski, “You can’t ever get hurt if you don’t set yourself up for a downfall.”

Like pedophilia, love is a touchy subject that needs to be handled with kid’s gloves, and I accept that I’m bound to piss off the hardcore Romeos and Juliets itching to respectively poison and stab themselves over irregular hormone levels.

However, love—an emotion with about as many stages as cancer—can be terminal if you don’t recognize the signs, so heed my humble advice because I’ve lived with it for six years.

In stage one or “puppy” love, you ironically begin ignoring your duties as a dog owner. Your heart burns like a quadruple bypass might be in your future. Your head lightens proportionally to your wallet. Car wrecks, failing grades, and impending global destruction don’t even faze you until you’re rejected which usually translates into a simple Facebook status change from “I hope everyone is as happy as me” to “I hope Cupid shoots himself.”

Stage two is when the disease spreads to the lymphatic system and you perform acts in public that you would normally consider disgusting. For example, after mashing your face into your lover’s for a good half-hour, you realize you’ve swallowed your lover’s tongue piercing. Instead of seeking medical attention or, at the very least, a potent bean burrito, you laugh and think about how cute this story will be at your wedding.

Upon hitting stage three, you begin to use biblical phrases whenever you speak about love. Your lover becomes “The One”; you decide you wouldn’t mind spending “eternity” with your lover, even though you know damn well that you’ll ditch him or her for your high school sweetheart the moment you hit the afterlife. Maybe you’ll start chucking your lover’s name into conversations with your parents, as if you’re prepping them for a bad undergraduate psychology experiment. Eventually, the delusions will culminate into stage four.

Better known as “Darwin’s stage,” stage four means only one thing: Propagation of the species. That’s not to say you haven’t been rocking the casabah already, but now you’re sober and your condoms are breaking on purpose.

Since the romantics reading this are tightening their little fists around their lockets and crying softly, lamenting that even the purist Love is really only hedonism with its dress still on, I’ll leave you with an uplifting thought from Rickey Lowe, a junior English major and true poet of the spoken word.

“You’ll know that you’re in love when you struggle to define it,” Lowe eloquently said.
Now you can’t say I always leave you with a sarcastic remark.

(Lowe obviously overlooks that if you struggle to define something, you either don’t understand it or it has destroyed your analytical abilities by lodging itself in your frontal lobe.

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What is love? Why do we dream about it, yearn for it, dread finding it, worry about it and fear losing it? There are countless definitions of what love is and numerous theories on how to tell when you are in love. But love truly that simple? The answer is no.

Love is complicated and twisted. This simple four letter word can lead to wars, disasters, grief and bliss. A true definition of love cannot be reached. For every person the definition of love will vary. Some will see it as  that burning fire in the soul that drives people to commit deranged acts while others see it as the small flame between two people who share a common goal.

To me, love is a passionate act in which you strive to make the other person the happiest person in the world. The second my partner is happy then I am happy as well. The happiness of my partner means more than my own happiness. The moment a person is enthusiastically willing to give up their own happiness in order for their partner to be happy, then love is achieved. Imagine being an FBI agent serving your time and effort to protect your president. When the president is threatened by a raging bullet, then the first instinct would be to dash in front of the bullet to save the president’s life. You ask no questions and knowingly place yourself in peril in order to save that specific person.

In the beginning, it is extremely difficult and confusing to know when one is in love. It resembles that moment when one suspects that one might have a malignant disease that could potentially bring pain and suffering, yet also bring the promise of having someone care for and love you. Every person realizes they are in love at different moments in their life. Eliana Briceno, sophomore Spanish and sociology double major, knew she was in love when, “I would get excited to just see my boyfriend.” 

The butterflies we feel when we are around that special person, or the mere thought of the reunion between you and the person you love, brings one of the greatest joys one can feel. The second you reunited with your significant other, your heart skips a beat and time stands still. Everything else in the world no longer matters and you bask in the ecstasy of love.

Time changes everything. The old perception of what it meant to be in love has changed dramatically.  Some girls view love as just another nuisance in life that they can either ignore or nonchalantly pass through. Do relationships really require love or is a mutual friendship between two people enough? Some might say love is not necessary as long as the perks are good. Can a person truly remain with another individual for a long time without the existence of love? Has love evolved into a deep friendship where passion no longer exists? Each individual’s story tells a different tale.

In the end, most people will testify that the time they spent in love was well worth the pain, although people will also admit that falling in love a second time is twice as hard as the first. Senior classics major Ginju Im said, “we [humans] create expectations and if those expectations aren’t met, we find disappointment.”

Once a person falls in love and then falls out of love then the individual learns that love brings heartache. Humans do not enjoy getting hurt and, once an individual gets, hurt they will try to never get hurt the same way again.

Love is a mystery that many have tried to solve, few have proposed an answer, and none have come to a true conclusion.

Life craves love. Poets, writers, singers, and actors all have offered a pure and simple definition of love. As Pearl S. Buck, author of “A Good Earth” once said, “the person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration."