Why love will always be the muse
8/21/2025
Before we begin, I would like it to be known that this is not a sappy piece about love. Not overeffusive nor gushy, just the ultimate truth that surrounds us everywhere, all of the time.
Love is one of the first things we experience, yet the last thing we understand. This begins at childbirth, feeling the warmth from your mother’s touch and experiencing a constant carefulness. You are pure and good, but you cannot conceptualize this love, for at that age, you cannot conceptualize anything.
As you get older, you hear teasing from friends and family of having a “crush” on someone in your elementary school. Maybe you liked their hair, or they brought something enticing for show-and-tell. It is simple and surface level, for at that age, how could you possibly understand anything more than spying on someone at recess and creating them a code name.
Fast-forward a few years, you have now experienced many firsts — quite possibly some of the most influential feelings of love to experience. First kiss, first relationship, first breakup. You are older, have gone through misfortune, and as you try to navigate your coming of age, you also try to love another being, handling their own coming of age.
Yet this time, it goes past hair and show-and-tell. You begin the process of devotion. Learning everything about another person, sacrificing your own plans for theirs, doing things you never thought you would do to please them. When you are younger, you can blame this on being inexperienced and juvenile; however, it is no secret that despite our memory, we continue this process with each new person we grow an infatuation for.
Time after time as we age, we fall into the maze of loving another person, just to feel heartbreak and regret we ever fell in the first place.
Love irrevocably changes you.
Which is why everything surrounding you all of the time concerns love. Music, art, poetry, billboards, movies, novels. And each outlet is not concerning only one element of love — being happy, stable, future-oriented. Many of these outlets speak to the consequential feelings of love — disconsolate, languishing, hollow.
The reason why love will always be the muse for our world is due to the fact that love is utterly gut-wrenching. It rips your heart from your body and allows you to bleed until you are dust. Even those happily in love have experienced this feeling — this feeling of being inconsolable —because love is not only romantic. Love is friendships and family and can be disguised as grief, anger, and euphoria.
When love happens to you, because it happens to us all, the emotions it will arise out of you will need an outlet. Love is too all-consuming to stay trapped away inside your mind, heart, and stomach. People turn to writing, painting, directing movies, because this feeling, whether positive or negative, looms for days, years, even decades. People need a release and relatability.
It can change everything about you, from how you dress to new wave patterns in your brain. It can leave you alone for months, and pop back into your life on a random Tuesday afternoon. I know many a person who refuse to fall again, as they cannot bear to experience the emotion they did before. Alas, they will soon fall, as we all do, because what other reason are we alive than to feel every emotion love can bring.
Your TV and books will always be occupied with the feelings — whether they are hidden or not — as love is the motive of the world.
A motive that will forever be an outlet and a muse all can indulge in. No matter if you are currently in love or are picking up shattered pieces, love will always be there, whether it is in the form of your mother’s touch, another lover, or yourself. Until then, you can see your emotions on a silver screen or tucked between pages, as we are all experiencing it, everywhere, all of the time.