Having feelings at this age, I realize, is not pointless. What else can prepare you for the heart-shattering blows of the real world more than a huge romantic disappointment earlier on? Love at this age opens up doors and windows, more than it closes. I used to think having a crush was restricting, always afraid of embarrassing yourself, and wanting to be yourself, 'but in a totally likable and unembarrassing way' says one of my friends.

If you look at it differently, loving someone is the state of which the self becomes not static but fluid. That is an exciting thing, to change the definition of one another through love, because you'll only know that you'll be you when you're one with him or her. Everything is new.
And loving someone has the ability to make you feel that the world is good. Love heightens your sense of possibilities. Every day is permeated with them. Suddenly you become so aware of all the should'ves, would'ves, could've beens. You might even act on them and carpe diem.
It acts like a magnifier of vision, perception with awesome clarity. It will make you believe in the cliches.
I used to look at people my age who speculate about love and think, romantic fools. I still think that. Yet now I think love is another medium of aspiration, which is vital in life.
Love at this age may be just a phase and will most likely end up as nothing, but you have the memories and the experience and the knowledge. It's just a phase. No, it's not just a phase. It's a phase. Why not entertain the hope?
Loving someone will make you really appreciate them. Either love, or babies do that-like my brother, who is the most fundamentally human human I know. Sometimes we forget we're human. We remember that people are scrubs, douches and noobs, is good at this, is very attractive, is very nice, and we label them so. They also have two eyes, two ears, a nose and a mouth, which is pretty amazing. It's what love does, makes you amazed by that. Or is it only fanatical people?
Even if you don't appreciate them that way, you will appreciate them as physically and psychically unique and marvel at the basic structure of their bodies, the layers of their minds. How a specific arrangement of features will capture that person and the question how do you capture the abstract them.

Love can create from its very existence miracles. <-A miraculous thing.

And miracles are for rejoicing, not scorning.