There are different categories of love. Love for your family. Love your friends. The tricky one: romantic love. The one that baffles me the most.
What is love? There are 28 definitions listed on dictionary.com. The first: "a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person".
Better question: how do we identify love? Sure, we can feel affection towards someone or something but does that really constitute as "passionate"? Can it feel passionate and not be love? Can't it simply be lust?
Love isn't like any other emotion. From the moment we are born we are already feeling cold, hungry, tired, warm, uncomfortable. People won't question you when you say "I feel happy" but will ask you 20 questions if you say "I feel in love". How can you be sure you are "in love"? What makes you feel "in love"? Are you sure you are old enough to be "in love"?
Is it like hunger that you can physically feel it or is it like happiness that is mental? Is it both? Perhaps.
Well, if it were that simple, I wouldn't be contemplating on it. Neither would the other millions of people on this earth looking for the same thing.
Why do so many of us feel other emotions due to love: jealousy, sadness, happiness, disappointment?
I read somewhere a few weeks ago that love does not cause these emotions. But, if you didn't care about someone, why would you feel anything towards them? Wouldn't one just be apathetic? Love, I believe, does have these consequences.
Why is it that we crave love, even if we know the headaches, the heartaches, the stomachaches it can give us? People spend a lot of time questioning whether they are in love or not, looking for love in all sorts of places and many times leaves us drained.
In a perfect world, I would imagine love to be this pure, strong, resilient bond between two people in which they could agree to live their lives together, either for a moment or forever, because they feel they complete each other and make each other happy. Rereading this, it sounds cheesy. But isn't that what everyone wants: a cheesy, fairytale ending?
I ask many questions in this entry. I can't answer any of them properly. Only experience will, I suppose. And even then, everyone's response would be different.
Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? We will all find out, sooner or later.
Love is one of the greatest joys of life. Despite its repercussions down the road.
It takes no time to fall in love. But it takes you years to know what love is.
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5 comments:
That is beautiful.
That was very beautiful and very deep.
Of course love is confusing no matter how good the outcome may be. But w.o all that drama and chaos life would just be plain and boring. In the end it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
i think the real problem is often people mistake other emotions for love.
Compassion, passion, lust, infatuation, fondness, just being attracted, Wut when we can say that what we have surpasses and outshawdows all then we can call it Love. When all things fade, the only thing that shines, and appreciates in value. Its quite honestly the only thing worth having.
I agree with the last statement you made Anna: love is the only thing worth having. Without love for anything, what is the point of many things we do for others? Where would we find meaning? There wouldn't be much meaning really.
this is so true and well expressed. Like life doesn't have enough questions for us to answer. I like the that you brought up the different realities those who deal with love face. In my opinion, we don't and can't have a general answer or definition of love. We can't cmpletely depend on the views of "intellectuals" who claim that it is what they say it is. One can only understand love, romantic or not, when they have personally experienced it.
On another hand, it could be a socially constructed concept. My pessemistic side tells me to say that there is no love, only lust and that what we claim is love is actually a desire to rationalize the institutions of marriage and such.
This really is complex, but I think you expressed this complexity well!!!
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