Campus Times Online

Like John Lennon, we often look beyond what we already have and strive for something better.

We often question our love for others but rarely stop to look deep inside and analyze its definition. What does the word encompass in itself?

I love standing in the soft grainy sand on the beach as the gusting wind blows into my face and the roaring waves crash and dissolve into foam at the base of my feet.

But this love does not equate to the way I love a person that I’m willing to spend an eternity with. My love for the beach lacks commitment and devotion even though it encompasses peace, kindness and patience.

Lennon, the self-righteous protester who had a tendency for prickling our conscience at times, expressed his own definition in the song titled “Love.”
“Love is free, free is love. Love is living, living love. Love is needing to be loved.”

As human beings we all have the desire to be loved by others, since love gives us the opportunity to live life to the fullest and feel free as we soar above life’s worries. Lennon’s lyrics expressed this thought fully.
The only glitch is that we often desire love from others but are reluctant to give it ourselves.

If we are not in it for the long run then there is no use entrusting a significant other with our emotions and talking on the phone until 2 a.m. or having shivers slowly tingle down your spine from the perfect kiss in that ideal moment.

On the same note, devotion is simply another word in the dictionary if it is not added to commitment. I see no point of standing on a doorstep or sitting at a restaurant table and telling my date how much I love him if I’m not willing to do everything in my power to make him happy.

And if the person that I love returns the favor, life would turn from a world of confusion into paradise.

I see life as too fragile and too short to aimlessly waste love, one of the best gifts given to us.

There’s no use of walking along the shores of love’s sea and merely wetting our feet when we have a chance to dive in and embrace love with everything it offers.

Since I got engaged, my view on love has become as important as the air I breathe.

Fifty years from now I want to be able to say the same words to my fiancé Andrey that Winston Churchill once said in regards to his wife, Clementine, “My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.”

Yelena Ovcharenko, a junior journalism major, is LV Life editor of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at yovcharenko@ulv.edu.