Love - The realization that there is someone more important to you than yourself. All the mushy crap in the world suddenly stops sounding nonsensical, all the songs suddenly make sense and take on a much more personal meaning, etc etc etc.
Depending on who you are and how it's handled, it could make or break you.
It's my sincere belief that that is the nexus from which the mightiest goods and most diabolical of evils can be forged.
I was a being of cold uncaring scientific reason and sarcastic schadenfreude. Humans, to me, were merely the bizarre creatures around that I studied and psychologically toyed with o figure out what made them tick.
The girl I first fell in love with is the absolute reason I am the completely different person that I am today.
She rejected me(my fault) but managed to handle me with absolute grace and care. In being lovesick over her and her dealing with me so perfectly she managed to rewrite my values from the ground up. Instead of giving me reason to be mad that she said no and resenting her for it if she had ignored me, or just feeling sorry for myself or whatever, I appreciated the effort she put in to dealing with me, and I admired the hell out of her wisdom and tact in being capable of doing so, for it was certainly well outside the scope of my abilities. I did nothing less than make it my absolute goal of learning from her, finding the zen, wisdom, and benevolence that she had mastered, and learning what it took to be worthy of her, or someone like her.
To one day be able to think myself her equal.
I now consider her my equal. Our friends have remarked that I have come close to challenging her as the "new Jesus". We are now both juggernauts of mental fortitude, albeit of different varieties. She continues to be more automatically charitable and volunteers for stuff more, but stress from work/school and dealing with the chaos that is people has taken a toll on her sunny optimism. I, on the other hand, am mostly armored against life and general people taking a toll on me, and, it must be said, I'm more naturally...uh...gifted, mentally. I'm a bit smarter, she's a bit wiser, but we're not far apart in either respect.
I eventually, mostly, got over her and moved on.
Coincidentally:
Recently, she has seemingly been showing interest in me all of a sudden (this is now....*calculates*....8 years later), and if all goes according to plan tomorrow, I will actually get to see her (we're both super busy people nowadays, so just actually getting to hang out with her is iffy) and ask her out. Hopefully, successfully this time.
