Love.
What is love? A question as old as the ages.
I recently had a bit of an epiphany on that subject. I'm not claiming to have figured out the answer to that question, however. On the contrary, I've finally realized that it has no answer. For a long time I thought I knew what love was. I believed I could spot if someone was in love and I could detect those people who only claimed to be in love.
Who am I to think I could answer a question that no one has ever been able to answer before? For such a subjective, abstract concept as love, I had an objective, black and white definition. That's like me saying I know the meaning of life. Oh what an ignorant fool I was. Here is my new theory on love, and keep in mind this is only my opinion. I no longer claim to know the truth...
Love is an emotion, nothing more; an intense feeling our body gets when we think about or make contact with certain people. It causes us to constantly think about that person. To long for their happiness and to want to share every happy moment with them. This feeling is all it takes to be in love. If you possess it with someone, you are in love.
Then there are things that supplement a loving relationship. Trust, honesty, loyalty, comfort. There are a myriad of characteristics associated with being in love. Many people believe that you have to have not only the feeling of love, but also some of these specific traits in order to truly be in love. I think that is a false conviction. I believe this because the feeling of love is universal. Everyone knows when they FEEL love. Those other traits, however, are unique to each person who believes in them. I used to believe that to be in love you had to be completely comfortable with the other person, but that honesty wasn't a necessity. Someone else believes that you can't be in love without honesty, but comfort didn't matter. The commonality between us that FEELING we both have. Those traits depend on an individual's set of values, but love itself is part of human nature. An emotion hard-wired into our genetic makeup that we cannot control, that everyone can recognize.
My psychology book defined true love and false love. I disagree with its analysis because it differentiates between the two by identifying the values that the authors believe must be present to create true love. They forget that not everyone has the same belief systems. They say that it's false love if you don't have trust and comfort in a relationship. But what if those two people don't care about trust and comfort? Do they have false love? Not necessarily. There might be certain characteristics that you need to have a lasting relationship, but not to experience love.
Love is a feeling. No one can know if someone is in love except the person experiencing it. There is no way to measure it or quantify it, you can only feel it.
I don't really know if I made my point very clear, it was hard to articulate the thoughts I had. That's the best I can do.
I recently had a bit of an epiphany on that subject. I'm not claiming to have figured out the answer to that question, however. On the contrary, I've finally realized that it has no answer. For a long time I thought I knew what love was. I believed I could spot if someone was in love and I could detect those people who only claimed to be in love.
Who am I to think I could answer a question that no one has ever been able to answer before? For such a subjective, abstract concept as love, I had an objective, black and white definition. That's like me saying I know the meaning of life. Oh what an ignorant fool I was. Here is my new theory on love, and keep in mind this is only my opinion. I no longer claim to know the truth...
Love is an emotion, nothing more; an intense feeling our body gets when we think about or make contact with certain people. It causes us to constantly think about that person. To long for their happiness and to want to share every happy moment with them. This feeling is all it takes to be in love. If you possess it with someone, you are in love.
Then there are things that supplement a loving relationship. Trust, honesty, loyalty, comfort. There are a myriad of characteristics associated with being in love. Many people believe that you have to have not only the feeling of love, but also some of these specific traits in order to truly be in love. I think that is a false conviction. I believe this because the feeling of love is universal. Everyone knows when they FEEL love. Those other traits, however, are unique to each person who believes in them. I used to believe that to be in love you had to be completely comfortable with the other person, but that honesty wasn't a necessity. Someone else believes that you can't be in love without honesty, but comfort didn't matter. The commonality between us that FEELING we both have. Those traits depend on an individual's set of values, but love itself is part of human nature. An emotion hard-wired into our genetic makeup that we cannot control, that everyone can recognize.
My psychology book defined true love and false love. I disagree with its analysis because it differentiates between the two by identifying the values that the authors believe must be present to create true love. They forget that not everyone has the same belief systems. They say that it's false love if you don't have trust and comfort in a relationship. But what if those two people don't care about trust and comfort? Do they have false love? Not necessarily. There might be certain characteristics that you need to have a lasting relationship, but not to experience love.
Love is a feeling. No one can know if someone is in love except the person experiencing it. There is no way to measure it or quantify it, you can only feel it.
I don't really know if I made my point very clear, it was hard to articulate the thoughts I had. That's the best I can do.