Being romantic is checking your gmail every 30 minutes or more just in case he’s replied back yet. Even though if he did reply you know you’re going to wait an hour before responding, an hour of rolling his words around your head and savoring it like a starburst in your mouth. Until it diminishes and leaves nothing but a sweet aftertaste.
But that is caused by the desire to be loved (not to love). When followed to its conclusion, this becomes infatuation, the temporary insanity that gives romantics a bad name.
Infatuation diminishes consciousness, leaving giddy schoolgirls in its wake. Men turn stupid when bitten by the aura of a pretty woman. It may feel fun or exciting at the time, but ultimately barren — a reminder of how unfair life is to be filled with such burning desires, only to be unrequited and unfulfilled.
To the dismay of the dreamy-eyed, infatuation for another doesn’t draw them in; it pushes them away. It is quite repulsive when someone is head-over-heals for you. (Deep down, we all know this, which is why we keep our crush a secret for as long as humanly possible.)
But to love — ah, no — it is the true perpetual motion machine, creating something out of nothing. And only in infatuation’s absence does true love show its face, leaving us with an inner strength we didn’t know we had. A presence that turns everything it touches to Gold.
And this is what romantics live for. To give their presence. Not because they have to, but because they choose to. Not to relieve a burning desire and prevent themselves from drowning, but to rise above the clouds — and live in perpetual motion.
