To Love Forever

“Who dares to love forever when love must die?”

This is a verse from the song “Who Wants To Live Forever”, by Queen. I came upon this song when a friend of mine asked me to sing the “We Will Rock You” musical’s version of it with her. I must say I was flattered. When I was listening to it, this one verse caught my attention (curiously enough, it is the apex of the song, in my opinion).

Lyrics, poems, verses, words. People stumble upon them all the time, every day. Most of them bump into their meaning, apologize, and move along. I’ve always been a word-metaphor-sticky kind of person. Whenever I hear a good phrase, it loops inside my head for days. And each day I learn something new from it. I wonder.

“Who dares to love forever”, this part is tricky already. There is a big relevance in explaining the difference between “love” and “passion” here. Folks tend to mix these two, particularly young ones. Passion is inconstant. It’s a feeling. It’s the desire for something or someone. It’s the urge of taking someone by the hand and saying to him or her “I love you” (even though that’s not necessarily love), or maybe just sending a love-letter or even writing a song, why not. Love is a state of consciousness. Love is the will of well being of something (we might consider the state of this something, in this case) or someone. The hope for one’s happiness and safety. That being said, I believe that Love, being an altruistic will, is eternal. Or at least it can be. Whatever belief you might have, let’s agree that a lifetime-lasting love doesn’t die with the person. Its memory is still love, and it will always be. As long as it makes the other happy (or had that intention), if it’s not forgotten, it’s immortal. Passion, on the other hand, being the cadence of feelings that it is, comes and goes. It’s mutant, sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s damaging.

There are also several different kinds of love, when I would nominate only one passion. There are yes indeed many feelings in there, but they all consist in one same thing.

“Who dares to love forever when love must die?”

I said that love is eternal. No, I’m not walking over myself here. I interpret the verse as referring to the dying part of all that is eternal. A moment can pass, a lover can pass, but the memories they make will always live on. A lover’s body might die, but his/hers memory lives on. Wherever they are now, heaven, nature, void; you still hope for their happiness, however it may come. It hurts. It hurts when a love dies. It hurts because even though it’s dead, it’s not dead. It’s not dead because a love cannot die. It dies because it’s not present, but the will lives on. And with will there is hope. And with hope there is feeling. Love, in its sublimity, is felt through hope.

There are not many people brave enough to love. Tons of them have passion, of that I’m sure. But passion usually goes as fast as it comes. Some might be dramatic; some might extend the pain for liking it (artists use that feeling a lot). It hurts, but it goes away. After a while, it becomes an “oh well, what can be done” kind of feeling. Love requires courage; you can’t be scared of hurting. When love is true, in the moment it’s at reach, tangible, it is sublime. The moments when everything falls into place. When you understand. The moments that are longed for and missed when they come to an end. The ones that play over and over again on your mind. The ones that break the nonchalance of one’s life. Not many are ready for that. Being indifferent is easy, is confortable. Love hurts, love heals. It comes and goes; yet it’s always there. That is the critical part of it. Who dares to be bound to something that will undoubtedly hurt? We could get into happiness here and put it into the concept of being special for its ephemerality. It is also in the background of everything, parting from the point that every human being’s goal is to be happy. Why do people get sad, then? Well, there would be no happiness if there were no sadness, would it? There is happiness when one parts from the point of sadness and builds up on it. When one departs from sadness through knowledge and builds its path up to enlightenment. Love hurts so it can heal. And the healing process of love brings happiness along. Just like the inconstancy of happiness, so is the inconstancy of love. It must die so it can be reborn stronger. It is always reborn. But are you strong enough to endure every time it dies?