Love — what is it actually? A feeling, an emotion or an assurance? In this era of ours, I honestly do think that the word 'love' has been so overused that it has lost whatever true meaning it once held. The word 'love' was once scarce, whispered to a loved one, was meant to capture whatever true feelings between two people. However now, we use it so easily in texts, tweets, emails that I no longer feel it is a scarce word. Given, I was once guilty of this crime. These days, I no longer use this word unless the person truly has a place in my heart.

Many people are afraid to fall in love, because to them, the risks of falling out of love are so much more dangerous. CS Lewis once said in The Four Loves, "There's no safe investment…to love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessnes…We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.”

Many of us treat love like an investment. We put in countless amount of time and effort to make someone else happy, sometimes at the extent of our own health, all in the hope of 'getting back' a little profit of affection from the other party.

But we forgot something, love is not safe. Love can be stomped on, trampled on the ground and even broken into shards. Love has the power to heal but also to hurt. Love can bring us into this spiralling self-induced depression. Nobody wants to get hurt because we have all read or seen how hurt can affect us. Be it getting dumped, losing the person to death or a divorce, I dare say our heart will never be the same after that. No matter how hard we try, our heart can't be the same anymore. The way we view and feel love changes, probably because we are now so painfully aware of the loss of love.

After reading this, some would say, "don't love in the first place, you won't get your heart broken then". Thinking about it, this does make sense, why try something when you know you will get hurt at the end of the day? I am sure at some point in life, this question will haunt us. That's because we can't guarantee that not loving would make things easier, less painful, less heart wrenching in the long run. As I quote, this is a "dammed if you do, dammed if you don't" kind of equation. Either way, we will get hurt, so why not risk the chance with our heart? Pain always come as a deal with happiness, we can't escape that.

What's the next best thing we can do? After all, "The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.” We would say, hell isn't any better too, but who are we to judge that?

At the end of the day, I believe that we need to have a leap of faith. No matter how dim the light is, we need to take the risk to venture out there, to find out what's great for us, to learn from painful experiences and grow. Life is after all a series of choices and a process of becoming; we change every second due to the things we are exposed to. And along the way, that's where we find love. Love gives us the support to keep going when the road is tough, love give us the strength to keep fighting the battle.

We all don't want to be in pain so give love a chance, to prove that it too can do something good to you. We do not want to see the glowing embers in our soul but instead a fiery red flame crackling with strength and intensity. We do not want to see a darkened soul but an enlightened one ready to take on the world.

We win some, we lose some and sometimes our losses is much greater than our winnings. But don't let that stop you from pursuing love, because love can do wonders. Love can ignite a passion deep within you, that runs through your soul, bursting with a warmth that you can't find in any other places.

And so as you carry on with life, keep this beautiful quote in mind, "There are no safe investments, but we invest anyway. Because heartbreak is transient, but regret is eternal."