Young love. Passionate love. Love with all your heart, love that sweeps you off your feet, love that makes you heady, love that makes you forget everything else, get lost in it, make silly decisions, and feel like you can run like the wind, through grass, with butterflies flying around you.
Love that overthrows life. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture. — Gwyneth Paltrow as Viola, Shakespeare in Love
In other words: love at 24.
24. When you are old enough to love, young enough not to think about it. When you are old enough to know it could [yet may not] last, and young enough to throw all of who you are into it in either case.
When you are 24, your heart is not only in the game — it is the captain. Your mind is too busy on its journey of discovering itself, finding out who it is, who it wants to be, and what’s going to be important in life. It’s too busy to pay attention to who you’re falling in love with.
You might not yet know if you are looking for an intellectual or a romantic, ambition or adventure, curiousity or passion. All you know is when you are with that person you love, none of this matters, it can all be figured out later, because all that matters now is that love, that smile, and how your heart races at every new experience together.
You are loved and in love — with all your heart and soul. It’s beautiful and it’s addictive. It’s young and it’s unique. A sky with no ceiling.
The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.— Benjamin Disreali
It may be that one ends up with their love-at-24, their first love. If romance, loyalty, safety, and connection are the priorities, this may well be the one and lasting love.
But what if you do not? What if it is a wonderful experience that you live through for that time only? What will the next time you fall in love be like? Will it feel the same, will your heart once again feel so full it can explode with that feeling? Can you love like you are 24 ever again?
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Can your heart lead the team again? Can you let go and delve in? Can you feel that passion again?
At 30, you have a few, or a lot, more experiences. You have a better idea of who you are, what makes you happy, what motivates you, and what excites you. You know what stimulates you mind and what fuels your soul.
When you are 30, you might not fully know who you are, but you are much further along on your journey. You are thinking of building blocks to a stable life, not what shakes the foundation of your soul.
Your heart is still in the game — this time, as co-captain. Your mind has entered the field.
Romance is no longer the main ingredient, it is now one of them. Rationality is in there too, looking for other things which might matter; intellect, curiousity, kindness, humour, patience, confidence, independence, ambition, are only a few factors vying to take part of the equation.
Your heart is rushing to love with all its got, your mind is calculating how well this person scores on its compatibility and priority requirements: what makes a good partner, parent, and support system.
It could be that your heart is slowed down by your mind. It can also be that your heart is also busy loving many other things — your job, your friends, yourself, maybe even your new apartment.
There’s only so much real estate to give out, so much love to give, so much electricity to fire the neural system. You are no longer 24 and at the start of life, you are 30 with a lot more life to love.
Your heart is still full, it is simply full with many other gifts of life.
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Whether love at 24 is the best love you’ll have or not is up to you. What love at 24 is though, is love for the first time. It’s a new experience. And a new experience is only a new experience once — the first time.
The beautiful thing about young love is the truth in our hearts that it will last forever. — Atticus
What this means though, is never compare any future feeling to the first one, for if you keep looking for the first experience again, you will miss out on all the ones to come.
Know that your first love is yours to keep, yours to learn from, and yours to use to make all the next ones shine.
For if love at 24 is like a burning fire, love at 30 is like slow-cooking coal — if you keep feeding it, it will slowly burn forever.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Roberto Nickson on unsplash