Love?

How do you know if you're in love?

According to the film maker of "One Week", if you have to ask then you're not. I would like to know, though, if this includes the many times you ask yourself if you're really in love with a person or if it's worth it when the going gets rough. It seems to be human nature to question everything we do or say after the age of 7, why is love the exception? And when it comes to love should we follow our hearts or our heads?

What if there is a person that makes you happy, most of the time, and when your heart doesn't skip that beat when you look at them your head starts to question what you are doing with them. You might miss them when you go away, but wish for a more startling spark when with them. Does this mean that there is no love or are we just searching for something that doesn't exist and ignoring the fact that the reason you miss the person when away is because you love them?

Are we looking for a love that is unattainable?

Perhaps Disney is blame for this with his tales of princesses and white knights. So instead of blaming your significant other (which in itself is a horrible turn of phrase that places someone on an unreachable pedestal) when it seems that the 'spark' has gone out, let's lay blame where blame is deserved.

Let Disney create the theme parks and let the rest of us create the love stories.

Dreams into Reality

"To sleep, perchance to dream..." -Shakespeare, Hamlet.

What happens if you cease to dream? What if one day you wake up and come to the realization that every single dream you have ever had has vanished. You wanted to be a medical examiner, a storm chaser, a detective, a chef, a bakery owner, a musician, own a record label, a novelist, a world traveler... and then suddenly you realize you don't know what you want. Have you ever?

My head was always full of different ideas about what I wanted out of life and how I was going to achieve them. Then one day I was forced to re-examine my life. I had thought that what I wanted was to own my own business, make a name for myself in some small way, move to an interesting country, learn a new language and then fall in love. I never wanted a family or marriage or to settle for anything. Then it happened. I fell in love too soon.

My world was turned on its head and I didn't know what to do. This didn't fit the plan. I still want to write a novel and own my own business and travel and learn a new language in my new country and play music in my spare time. Then why do I now feel as though all my passions are gone? Why do I not feel passionate about any one thing and feel as though I am settling?

I am not saying that I am settling for who I have chosen to share a portion of my life with. I don't even know what length of my life will be shared with this person as he does not know himself. On the contrary, I feel happy that I have found a person that I would even consider sharing a part of myself with. Then why do I feel the settling?

I think I know what I want, it's what I've always wanted, so is this why I feel like I am settling? I feel like because my dreaming has come to a stand still so has my life?

Maybe in a small sense it has. To live is to dream. It is our imaginations that give our life its breath. What happens when you cease to dream? I can honestly say, I don't know. I will just have to try and find a way to get life back into my dreams. I don't know how I will accomplish this yet, or what new things I will have to try before I realize whether I still hold the same passions for my dreams. Either way, I hope, I know, in time I will re-imagine, re-discover, or find new dreams. My imagination is not dead just because my life has skipped ten steps ahead in my plan, and I am not settling no matter how I may feel at the time. If I don't do anything about it and stop dreaming altogether then I am settling.

I am settling for death of dreams over life of imagination, and that is something that I refuse to do.