I sit on the plane, listening to these songs.

The location isn’t unique: I listen to them on the radio, on the subway, on the bus, in my car. Even the artist isn’t unique, I could easily interchange one with the other, because in essence, they’re saying the same things. They’re all writing about love.

And I doubt it.

“It sells songs,” I tell myself. “That must be why they’re asking how to ‘keep love alive’ or are ruminating on the very nature of life, of love, on how loss and longing keeps them frequenting bars, lamenting the departure of love.” I don’t adopt my cynical nature when hearing it from a female singer, yet with males, I return to doubting everything I hear.

What does that say about me?

It’s incongruous. As trite as it sounds, as pathetic as it may be, I believe in love. If you pressed me on it, I’d probably be liken to say it’s the meaning of life: to love and to be loved. And yet when I am faced with its harsh reality, the unadorned truth of how it succeeds and fails independent of our best intentions, I find myself retreating into my shell of cynicism.

These songs, they’re just a melody I can memorize, a hypothetical reality that draws people in on the romanticized notion that “yes, this could apply to YOU one day!”

Because, cynicism aside, I’ve never seen it. I’ve never felt it, at least in my life, in a romantic sense. So to put the faith in the fact that it exists…I’m not there yet. I’m not yet a believer.