It's infinite and unconditional

They say the best things in life are free but are they really? Few would argue that love is one of the best things that life has to offer and while we think that it cost us nothing to give our hearts, the truth of the matter is that it always comes at one of the biggest prices.

Whether it's the love of family, friends or that special someone we all dream about, love costs us more than any amount of money in the world. Love is directly connected to our happiness in life and while you can't put a price on it or live without it, it takes the most out of us.

As a parent the love I have for my son is infinite and unconditional. No matter what he does I will never stop loving him but with that love comes with a hefty price to pay.

We worry so much about how our children are going to turn out that we do everything in our power to make sure they have the best possible start in life. Not just with the education or possessions we're able to afford for them but also in the way we bring them up and teach them right from wrong. When a child does something they shouldn't we have to teach them that it's wrong and in many cases that means having to punish and chastise.

Growing up I was never able to understand when my parents used to say: "this is going to hurt me a lot more than it hurts you" but as a parent I now know exactly what they meant. The guilt I feel when I see the hurt in my son's eyes because he thinks I'm being unfair or unkind is almost too much to bear. When you love someone you always want to see them happy and to know that something I've done or said is the cause of his unhappiness eats away at the soul of me, even when I know it's the right thing to do.

As for the love we feel for our friends and that special someone, it comes from a very different place but is equally as costly to our emotions. We meet people and start to put our trust in them; we love them and give all we have to give to them. We invest our time and feelings into something that at the time we believe will last forever, ironic really when you think about how many friends and lovers come and go in our life time, and when it goes wrong we are left with more pain and loneliness than we ever thought it possible to feel.

We're left with doubts about ourselves and our ability to trust our own judgments and when we next venture into the realm of friendship or relationships we do so with distrust and suspicion in our hearts until that moment when we decide to love and trust again, at which point the cycle begins again.

Yes, there are those friends and lovers that come into our lives for a lifetime and we will love and trust until the day we die but even they come with a hefty price tag. The more you love, the more a person is able to hurt you and whether you find a way to work around that pain and hold on to the love you have or not, the scars often run deeper than any wound could manage.

And yet, who among us would choose to live without love in our lives? In the words of Shakespeare: "If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! It had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound that breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!