What is love, anyway?  

Love.  No other word can claim the massive depths contained in those four letters.  We spend our lives searching for it, realizing it, living it, and becoming it.  We’re lucky if once in our lifetime we find ourselves in love with someone.  We’re even luckier if we discover this before that person vanishes from our life.  So how do we know when we’re in love with someone?  What does it mean to be in love?  Every person is different inside and the way in which we experience emotion is no exception.  At the same time, though, there is consistency in what defines an emotion.  With that in mind, love can be broken down into two categories:  Fireworks and Friendship.

Fireworks

Remember that first love?  The guy or gal you saw from across the high school cafeteria and your insides exploded like the Fourth of July sky?  This falls into the Fireworks category.  In other words, love at first sight.  Those butterflies and nerves that buckle our knees and dampen our palms…it’s exciting, isn’t it?  With Fireworks love, we experience emotion first, and then we get to know that person who captured our hearts with a single glance.

Friendship

This is what we search for when we’re older…er, wiser.  Someone that we get to know slowly, intimately, and then love simply grows until you find that you cannot be without that person.  Remember that cheesy “You complete me” line from Jerry Maguire?  Well, that’s precisely the kind of love he was talking about.  Friendship love is where that person completes you, makes you whole, because they have stolen a part of you that will forever be part of them.

So which is better?  Fireworks or Friendship?  My opinion is that friendship is better.  Fireworks often end quickly (and with more fireworks) because the love is based on pure emotion and not really knowing the other person.  Friendship, on the other hand, is based on your shared experiences with that person, and you have grown with them in a way you very rarely grow with someone.  No matter which type of love you subscribe to, one thing is not debatable.  Both Fireworks and Friendship are legitimate types of love.  And both will turn your world upside-down.

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