The line in my title is better known as a statement and not as a question but since I am always pointing out how questions are more important than answers, I agree that it should be in this form. Some will answer the question with yes and some with no, it all depends on our personal experiences and our thought patterns. What do you think? If you knew in advance that you will end up hurting and suffering, would you love?

Those lines come from the poem In Memoriam A.H.H. written by British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson in 1849. The last line is often used to discuss the endings of romantic relationships even though the poet wrote the piece in remembrance of the death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Arthur died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in Vienna in 1833. Critics all around the world considered this poem to be one of the great poems of the 19th century. Keeping this in mind, I will move away from focusing entirely on romantic relationships and approach this from a general standpoint. Love is not only romantic, ask any parent that and they will agree. If you could ask Alfred, Lord Tennyson, he would agree too.

Whether we want to admit it or not, love is almost always conditional. We love people when they act the way we approve. A lot of that acting is related towards us. We will appreciate someone being kind, generous and loving more than we will someone who is mean or unjust to us. There is love and there is Love. Love starting with the capital letter does not have conditions. If you Love with L and not l, you will do so regardless of if your friend/lover/child/neighbor has done something wrong and you will continue to do so even when they leave you.

I am not necessarily saying that being selfish is a bad thing. Of course you love a person who is being nice to you, we all have preferences. I am just saying that you should be aware of that. A lot of marriages end up in divorces because one or both sides did not follow the rules and went on to do or say something that the other party does not approve of. Love stopped. Is that possible? Can we truly say that we loved someone if we can stop loving them? We could be disappointed or hurt but I do not think that you can ever stop loving someone.

People more often love what they think a person is than the actual person. We create an image of a person in our minds and then get very surprised and disappointed when it turns out we were wrong. Are we able to say and really mean the following:

There are two major questions we have to ask ourselves. The first one is do we love a person for who he or she is or do we love them for who we think they are. The second question is will we love them when they stop being that. What are the reasons behind our love, what are the conditions? What rules does the person must follow in order to be loved by us? We all have those rules but are we all aware of them or are we deluding ourselves?

I once asked one teen why does she love her father who was never there for her and with whom she has no relationship with. She said: "Because he is my father" and I answered her that genetics is a stupid reason for love, it is a terrible excuse. Should children love their abusive parents? Should a girl love her father if he rapes her? Should a mother love her child who is beating her and burning cigarets on her body? No. Plain and simple, no. A certain amount of rules to love someone is a good thing to have. You are not obliged to love someone just because they are related to you. You could Love them, but not love them.

The only reason to love someone is for the feeling you get with that loving. You do not have to love your parents and you do not have to love your children. You do not have to love anyone, no one can make you love anyone. People get very sensitive when I say that you do not have to love your child and some even say how it is impossible to not love your kids. Hm... A lot of social workers would disagree. There are many abusive people in this world and nope, I do not believe a father who rapes his daughter or sells her of is loving her. Therefore, it is possible not to love your child. I also do not believe that a mother who is abused by her son is loving him, she is trying and breaking under social constructs but she is suffering and there is no love there. Again, not loving your child is possible. These radical examples are here to prove a very specific point. No one can make you love anyone, it is always up to you and your own preferences. Why do you love? Because you think you have to and are deluding yourself or do you really love?

I have heard a lot of abused women say that they still love their husbands because they are, in fact, their husbands. Another stupid reason to love someone, a contract, a piece of paper. I can not stress this enough, no one can force you to love. Love because you really do love, stop faking.

We all have a limited time on this Earth and love is one of those things that makes it worth wild. There are so many people you could enjoy, love and be loved by. Every moment is a blessing, use it. After reading this text, you could go outside and be hit by a truck. I could go outside and be hit by a truck. Think about that for a moment and decide on how your next moment will look like. Will you enjoy it? Will you love it? You could and you most definitely should.

People come and go out of our lives. Some stay for shorter periods of time and some for longer. Be grateful for all of them. Enjoy every moment because you never know if it is going to be your last one or not. Smile often and love whenever you can. It is always better to love and lose than not love at all. We lose people all the time. Some leave us, some are left by us and they all sooner or later die. Suffering is a normal part of the love process. We suffer after a loss because we will miss that person, that is normal. Besides, some of the best art pieces came out of depressed states. We should be grateful for our depression too for it also teaches us and allows us to grow and evolve, grieving is beneficial for our development. We can learn something from everything, even that.

There is always a chance you could get hurt by someone but that should not be stopping you from entering a relationship with another person. If it were better to not have loved at all, we would not be with anyone, ever. There would be no relationships because all relationships end, if not by any other means then by death and death is always hard to handle. Your husband or wife will die eventually but that should not be stopping you from loving them now. That should not be stopping you from living love and loving life.