After breaking up with his long-time girlfriend, a woman he said was the love of his life, Alex got married to someone else. Their break-up was a result of cultural differences. It took both of them years to try and get over each other, and when Alex was ready to look for a marriage partner, he considered many things, but love. His search was clear cut and deliberate; he wanted a woman who was presentable, educated, had good looks, and was financially stable. Love would eventually set in, he would say. Through a friend, he met someone, and in an instant, he decided she was the woman he was going to marry. Alex was tired of being alone, and so he worked all circumstances to find a wife, and he did! While some wait on chance to make love happen, other people, like Alex, get to work; they influence events and write their own love stories. Can we choose who we love? Can you choose the rest of your emotions and feelings—particularly the negative ones like anger, resentment, boredom, envy and the like? If you have no control over how you feel, then you cannot choose if you love someone or not, wrote one Quora user. To her, love is an interesting word. It’s hard to nail down. When you love someone, you’re proud of their accomplishments. You admire them for traits like resilience, courage, independence, and healthy self-esteem. But it goes far past that—it’s the way you feel when they’re around because of how they treat you, which is ideally with respect, compassion, and affection. If someone treats you well, and everything else falls into place (physical attraction and good communication), love is a foregone conclusion. Those who say that love is a choice are only partially correct. Showing up and being present because you think you ought to isn’t love, rather, obligation, she considers. But Leticia Imbabazi, a shop attendant, believes that finding love is a combination of both destiny and choices. “There is a part of us that makes conscious choices to love someone, though there are factors too, such as where you meet, how that person behaves and the timing of events, that’s literally out of our control,” she says. Waiting on fate alone isn’t enough if you want to find love, Imbabazi says. Are we defining love the wrong way? According to Rabbi David Wolpe, the word is mostly used according to the first definition given in the dictionary: “an intense feeling of deep affection.” In other words, love is what one feels. He mentions that after years spent speaking with couples before, during and after marriage; and of talking to parents and children struggling with their relationships, he is convinced of the partiality of the definition. Love should be seen not as a feeling, but as an enacted emotion. To love is to feel and act lovingly. But what if the whole point is not to know or understand but to feel? How do we choose that? Lynette Mutoni, a university student wonders. Trying to define what love is, is like trying to make sense of life. In life, it always seems like we have all the liberty to make choices, but this isn’t always the case. What we make choices from is still predestined, she says. Mutoni, hence, believes that when it comes to love, choices are overrated, “There is a lot that goes into play that we have no control over.” Nonetheless, love remains the most fascinating concept. It covers a wide range of sentiments and conducts; it also means and comes in different ways for different people.
