The Meaning of Love

The Japanese say that if the flower is to be beautiful, it must be cultivated. However, there is no way to hold something that is truly beautiful; not without suffering the consequences. there is a reason roses have thorns. and a thorn protects the rose, harming only those who would steal the blossom. But he who dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose, for the rose speaks of love silently in a language known only to the heart. And love? The best kind of love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more. the kind of love that plants the fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. When you love someone, you love the whole person just as they are, and not how you want them to be.

Love is not finding the perfect person. It is seeing the imperfect person perfectly. When we are in love, we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before. To some, however, it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. For these people, where there is love there is life. Because we are most alive when we are in love. Of course, for me, I fell in love the way one would fall asleep. Slowly, and then all at once. If I know what love is, it is because I met you. I love you in ways that you have never been loved, for reasons that you have never been told, for longer than you think that you have ever deserved, and with more than you will ever know has existed inside of me. You are the light of my world, the melody of my heart, and the love of my life. That my friends, is called true love.

True love is the ability to love completely and never let go. No matter how difficult is becomes. It is about learning about each other and never giving up on each other as a pair. When love is genuine, it always manages to find a way. And when you have such a tremendous love for someone, you will always find each other.

But this is not a love story. It is my life and as such there is love, loss, war, death, and sacrifice. It is about the things that needed to have been done, and the choices that needed to have been made. Everything that you are, is a product of every single choice you have ever made. I believe that we are all solely responsible for our choices and that we must all accept the consequences of our actions. Every word, deed, and thought throughout our lifetime. It is our choices that show what we truly are far more than our abilities. But everything we do comes with its own set of consequences.

Sometimes it is the smallest choices that can absolutely change your life. Looking back at the choices I have made, I cannot say that I regret any of it because every choice I have ever made, has led me exactly to where I am today, and to the man I love. I love him more than I have ever loved anything or anyone. I would do anything for him, and in my own opinion, that is the greatest sacrifice I could make.

Sacrifice is a part of life. It is supposed to be. It is not something to regret, it is something to aspire to. sometimes you need to sacrifice something that matters to you, to offer something that matters more to someone else. You can sacrifice and not love, but you cannot love and not sacrifice. True love is selfless. It is prepared to sacrifice because that is what love is all about. Sacrificing something for the person you love.

In the end, every sacrifice has a reward. Sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice your dreams for the sake of others. By sacrificing for others, you make yourself a good person and good people are like candles. They burn themselves up to give other people light. Besides...nothing great was ever accomplished without making a few sacrifices. And the greatest sacrifice one could ever make, is to sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of someone else. Because that...that is true sacrifice. That is true love.

Yes, this is the story of my life. It is about the choices I have made, the places I have been and the people I have met along the way. It is about the mistakes I made and the lessons I had to learn. But this is about so much more than the life I lived. No, it is so much more than that. It is the story about how I died. but death is not the end. It is never the end, but rather another beginning. It is another door opening and not a door that is closing. Death is the beginning of a new story; the final story.

So, take a seat and get comfortable because this is a long story. In a long story, everything becomes kind of convoluted. It can become sort of difficult to remember what had led up to whatever point you are at. I will admit that I worried a little bit about people being able to keep the shape of the story in their heads while they were reading it, and not wonder how they got to wherever they had ended up. But who knows...maybe you will have learned something from my story and apply that lesson to your own life. However, I can only hope that you apply whatever lesson you may or may not have learned from me to your own life in a positive degree and not a negative one.

So without giving away too much here, let us move on shall we? My name is Grace Holden and these articles are my story.