Loving someone, and Caring for someone

I've had many friends who've asked me what is the difference between caring and loving someone. Some thing they are one and the same, which in a sense they are. Others can feel the difference, which is there indeed.

Honestly I've only known about the difference, or what I believe is the true difference between Loving and Caring for about a year now. And even that was thanks to a friend whom I talked it out with during another ride on the Love-car of the Emotional Rollercoaster.

Interestingly, I always find myself remembering a line from The Matrix (I believe it was the last installment of the Trilogy, Matrix Revolutions). It went along the lines of this. I won't quote it exactly, since I don't remember the exact words, but the gist of it went something like this.

"Love is just a word. What gives it meaning is the feelings and ideas that we associate with the word..."

That pretty much sums up every single 'emotion' in the world.

Every person in this world is unique, and as a result, we all put different meanings to the words 'Love' and 'Care'. But in this case, we'll talk about them in a relationship sense.

Simply put, the only real defining difference between Loving someone and Caring about someone, is the fact that Caring has -NO- strings attached.

When you love someone, you always want to be with them, and always hope they love you back. You get jealous at the slightest of things, and it just brings about a whole bucketload of emotions, which most are unimportant.

However, if you truly care about someone...no matter what happens, you will be there to support them, to be by their side. To "love" them. But caring pulls you beyond jealousy and every other negative emotion you might feel if they end up with someone else or anything. To truly care for someone, is to say that as long as they are happy, then you are happy for them too.

Right now, I find myself typing this post from a friends house. A friend who I care so much for, until yesterday I realised that I might be falling in love with her.

Without going into details, I found myself cutting through the chain-lock on her apartment door with a couple of Policemen. I was so worried something had happened to her.

In a sense this was an overreaction on my part, and is now making me even more confused as to how I feel about her.

Following my previous definitions of Love and Care. What I did could be constituted as an act of Love, doing something so crazy as to break into her house just to make sure she's ok.

HOWEVER...could it not also be an act of Care? The fact that I care so much about what happens to her, that I went thus far into making sure she was ok?

Now here is where the lines of feelings and emotions start to blur. It is inevitable that one will blur into the other. Because in essence yes they are the same. Perhaps you could say that Care is a higher state of Love, in a way.

Yes, I'm sad that she's not ready for a relationship yet, or that I may not be able to be with her even if I wanted to be her boyfriend. This is my love for her talking. But at the same time, I will always wish her the very best, and as long as she's happy, then I'm happy for her too. Now this, is my care for her loving.

It's up to us which emotion, which feeling that we choose to show, but I honestly think that going beyond the boundaries of just loving and all that, is the most beautiful thing in the world. To be so comfortable with someone, to care about them so much...it's a feeling that we've all been blessed to feel. And I myself feel so privileged that I can feel this way too.

Anyway, just a random post for random thoughts...

She's still asleep in bed, I suppose I should wake her up. She did ask me to come her to take her shopping after all...heheh...