Do you really love? Or are you fooling yourself?
We can never know
You cannot learn what pain means by merely reading books. You have to experience it, which means, we all have personal definitions of what pain is. And our definitions may all be different.
When someone says it hurts a lot, does it really? Is there an objective scale to compare the level of pain we experience? Sure we all know what a paper cut is, a bee sting—that is near the bottom of the intensity of pain we can experience. But what about the upper levels of pain? If you compare all of us, we have all experienced differing levels of intense pain.
To a mother who just gave birth, the pain of a broken arm may be just a mere inconvenience. She might rate the broken arm as a 4, while for a child, it might rate as a 10, as that is the worst pain he has experienced. It is all relative.
So when someone says it hurts a lot, all that means is that it hurts a lot in comparison with the pain they have experienced in the past.
That’s pain. But I think it is true for everything. Even love.
When you are dating, and someone says “I love you,” does it mean the same thing? Some people just lie. But liars aside, if they really mean it, do they mean the same thing? I suggest not. Because there is no objective scale. They can only compare their current feeling to what they felt in their past—just like pain.
Love is not a black and white proposition. It is not just, “I love you” or “I don’t love you.” There is a scale to love. And when someone says “I love you more than anyone I have ever loved,” could it be that they have never really loved someone deeply before you? Could it be they really don’t know what they are talking about, because they have never really loved? If there was an objective scale, their intensity of love could be at a 4, while for a different person to say “I love you,” they might not say that unless it is at least a 7 on that objective scale.
The point I am trying to make is this: We are going around thinking we love people, but do we really? We can never know, as there is no objective scale. And we don’t know where our experience fits in that scale.