The other day I asked a question on Facebook, just a small innocuous question…..
“What is Love?”
I dared people to answer the question, no debate or argument with other answers allowed. I wanted to know what some of my friends and relatives thought the answer was. Here are some of the answers:
I thought all of them were interesting, some more than others. This is my favorite:
“The emotion which makes us hunger to give, even when we believe we hold nothing more.”
Given the diversity of my Facebook friends, I was somewhat surprised by how consistent the answers were. I honestly thought some of my ‘friends’ would have come up with something more, something grander. Then again, I sometimes expect a great deal when I throw the door open with general questions. I think when we ask these questions it stumps people.
What is Love?
How do we know it when we are touched by it?
Here is what I think love might be, these are just my thoughts mind you.
Love is the perfect storm, everything around you might be chaotic but inside the safety of love you always find peace without asking.
Love is the perfect counter balance, your weakness and strengths are balanced without constant power struggles to maintain the upper hand.
Love is a gift offered freely, nothing withheld, mind, body, heart, soul and spirit. Unbroken, unchained and without reservation, in the offering is freedom and the knowledge of the gift returned.
Love is absolute trust, our secrets laid bare without fear of judgment and complete knowledge we will be held closer for our painful opening.
Love is focused, love notices and remembers everything, love is vain about love itself. Love balances on the precipice of silence, always basking in the glow of its own light, jealous of sharing but tempted to preen and show its delight in its possession of Love itself. Love once sure of itself, certain of its circle and passion, love cannot help but crow and claim. Love is a claiming and a choosing.
That to me is love. I am sure there is more, I have been thinking about this a great deal. I know there is more, I have written about love and what I want in my future, I thought though this simple question was a brain teaser.
What is love to you?
QBG_Tilted Tiara 
Thanks Val. I loved this post. You know my answer, so I’ll refrain from posting again.
I know Grant.
Love for me is simple. It is a content feeling, knowing you have that other half. When you need that other half they will be there with no conditions. A state of being that makes you smile..Even when life makes it hard for you to not smile. It’s comfort, friendship, caring. dependable.
I have been with the same woman 25/26 years and I am 40 now. We have two sons 20 and 22 and two daughters 3 and 5 years old
To not have the love I know would be to not be alive ..
Good question hon
x
Thank you so much for your addition and for personalizing it. Adding comfort to the list is invaluable, I think you must be right this one would be that warm blanket feeling.
Val
Yeah it kinda was Val..
Thanks..x lol
To me love is about unconditional acceptance.
It is a sweet madness that is only diagnosed when you lose your heart.
Love is all those unexplained feelings, the confusion, the longing, the uncertainty that comes with caring for someone.
Valentine, love is perhaps the one thing that demands us to accept without having to be convinced. I say this because when I look at the way I have loved in the past, I am surprised by how much logic had nothing to do with to do with it. Do I regret it? Never!
I am a sucker for brain teasers, so i couldn’t help myself. Thank you. 🙂
I know this might sound kind of off, but how are you doing, Val?
Lyrical, I think your definition is as close to wonderful as could be. Thank you for joining in. Accept without having to be convinced, yes that is it. Logic can’t possibly have anything to do with it.
I am well Lyrical, I am very well.
Love all the answers to love you’re getting. Of course there’s so many different kinds of love, but when I think of love, I think of my children and how devoted I am to them and love them above all else. Love is wanting to do acts of kindness for those you care about without expecting anything in return. In Judaism we call it, ‘gmach,’ which actually is short for loving acts of kindness. I believe in that.
Monica, thank you for that one. I will have to remember ‘gmach’, I have never heard it before but think it encompasses so much.
Love cannot be explained with mere words.
It is a feeling of emotions which consumes the body, mind, veins, blood, & soul.
It can transform the entire universe if we allow it to.
xxx
Oh Kim, that is wonderful. It is the last part that is so telling. The need for us to allow it too. Love is transformative, only if we allow it.
There are many avenues of love…romantic, maternal/paternal, agape….but I think all involve that incredible rush of joy that fills us, that desire to care for the loved one, that emotion that encompasses all we see and hear and feel, that unconditional outpouring of the best we have to give.
Yes, that desire / outpouring to give. You are the second person to bring up joy. Joy is certainly part of it.
Thank you for your addition.
Love is unconditional.
In all cases, this is true TotsyMae. In all cases it is indeed unconditional.
Reblogged this on Nature's Walk Photography.
My brain is going in too many directions with this one to share, but I will say that I LOVE the topic and the discussion, and I LOVE you, Val! So…there! 🙂
My brain has been pinging in many directions on this subject as well my friend. I am hoping for some of my favorite friends, you included too add their two cents to the subject. I am learning patience, I will wait.
I LOVE you also.
❤
Love is the pureness and perfection that exists within us and around us and can’t be properly expressed or experienced outwardly until it is fully embraced inwardly. That’s at least what I make of it at this point in my life.
I think you point is well taken and perfectly expressed. Thank you Sue.
The very fact that understanding ‘Love’ remains open question, interpretation and imagination would suggest that as a species, we have some what to go before arriving at a conclusive or convincing answer. And while many of the responses above may be perfectly valid, how to realize any of them within a relationship remains problematic. And in principle, knowing what love is also requires knowing what it is not. And in that sense, I have always found this verse from Shakespeare, from his poem Venus and Adonis a useful reflection:
Call it not love for love to heaven is fled
Since sweating lust on earth usurp’d His name.
Under who simple semblance man hath fed
upon fresh beauty blotting it with blame,
which the hot tyrant stains and soon bereaves
As caterpillars do the tender leaves.
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain
but lust effect is tempest after sun.
Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain.
Lust’s winter comes, ere summer half be done.
Love surfeits not, lust like a glutton dies,
Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies.
I think Love will always be an open question, thus the reason for my question. To generate discussion. I don’t think any answer thus far is problematic, I think each of us defines ‘love’ as we want it defined for ourselves, don’t you?
What interesting responses you have received – both those ones mentioned in the post and here in your comments section. I think love is about feeling accepted and respected. It’s mainly defined by the feeling of contentment and joy. Good discussion!
You are so right Christy, it is acceptance, respect, contentment and joy. Joy is such a good word, isn’t it?
While I agree there are so many different types of love, we love family friends and lovers in different ways I think if you are talking about a passionate love then so often it is the feeling in your heart you cannot quell no matter how much your head tells you to hold back.
I think the focus for the question was is any and all love, though my answer was certainly on romantic love.
Your answer adds too mine, thank you Paula.
Love is an unlimited passion that is applicable to many situations, but different for every situation. Thus the two keys … not establishing a limit … and knowing how to handle it in different situations.
I ‘love’ your answer Frank. I think you have one of the keys, the idea of not establishing limits, or perhaps holding nothing in reserve.
Thank you
🙂
Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
Excellent!! Rely like the way you got your answers..
The answer to me depends on the person answering and their experiences with love. It’s all individualized!
Thank you, I think you are likely right on how we answer the question. Though my answer is changing and has changed a great deal over the past months.
The answer is ever evolving, I think … on a personal level mostly. I think the answers depend on personal experiences based on the which kind and how many kinds of love one has experienced.
Yes, true. I think though it is also as we ourselves evolve, our own expectations of how and what we want from life changes. If we become more demanding of what we want, our definitions of what love is also changes. This is true whether it is romantic love, or otherwise.
I agree …. always meant it to be all kinds of love we experience.
I like the thought of evolving love depending on how we have evolved ourselves and matured. Good one!
I have been thinking about this a great deal lately. It seems the universe is demanding of us when we try to hide. Yanking us into the light and requiring we pull ourselves up onto our feet to do a bit of rethinking of our suppositions. Never one to play fair, the universe.
Universe has a mind of it’s own. It’s the same as ours. It happens that we don’t know yet!
On another note … take a look here. Would you give me your opinion?
http://lgbtseniorvoice.wordpress.com/
I love the introduction! I think it is a lovely and loving story. I don’t think I realized you had ‘found’ your first love again. Now I am weeping copious happy tears.
That’s what love is for me!!
❤
Working on this one too …..
http://weare1voicemedicalcorner.wordpress.com/
I think this is a fabulous source! So well done and such great information.
Did I mention, I followed
No, you didn’t!! TY …. Hugs!! I really appreciate it.
I think that love is different for everyone we meet as each level of love is determined on how a relationship pans out. Sometimes the love that one feels is so strong that it seems as though it will never end and yet for many reasons, or just a singular cause it doesn’t last. Feelings play a very big part in love of course, how we interact during relationships, in my way of thinking the very core can be strengthened or weakened as it isn’t an exact science for everyone and all loving, whether strong or weak can come to an abrupt ending whether we like it or not, choices, unfortunately rarely come into it.
When love breaks down the inner love that one feels for another doesn’t fade quickly, sometimes it never leaves the heart and mind but each person has different tiers of love, which often do not match the person that they are with, I figure that for those that find and keep love for all of its beauty are very lucky, as life and loving can be so unkind, it can also be the most significant part of being, but for this study I think that defining love can be complex or incredibly simplistic.
I have enjoyed your posting Val and I wish you a lovely Tuesday filled with wicked and wonderful moments.
Andro xxxx
Thank you Andro, for your addition to the discussion. Am hoping others will add also.
I am fascinated by the question, aren’t you.
Indeed, love is illusive, as one of your friends declared. But, once you come to love someone, you never really stop loving them.
Hmmm, I think love can be killed. By bad acts, by abuse. You may hold memories of love, but I think love can be killed.
What an interesting study!
it was rather fun Ian. Some answers are still coming in. These though were the first so I thought I would grab them.
Reblogged this on The ObamaCrat™.
For me, love constitutes emotions, thoughts, words and deeds built from the ground up – complete with detours and setbacks, for sure – but inexorably climbing to that plateau. Yes, on earth, we reach a plateau before age robs us of memory or more.
Perhaps this is better understood when compared with the ‘usual’ explosive fireworks and joy that slowly (for some, very quickly) peters off and falls down to reality. I say ‘usual’ because in the case of Lisa and I – we both took one look and detested one another. It was more than a year (if memory serves me right) before I asked her out – and she readily agreed 🙂
Love is like a home – not a house – a home, we build from the foundation up – never from the roof down.
Lisa and I continue to build – we hope this is one job we never consider as complete, as there will always be repairs and redecorations.
Peace,
Eric
Eric, I knew you would have an excellent definition based on your own wonderful and long standing marriage to Lisa. Thank you for this one.
Val
You’ve defined it right on the dot, in every shape and form. Yes, Without a doubt especially a form of insanity, Yet one that we very clearly are proud of and show too, well said 🙂
Agreed Andy.
🙂