What Is Love?
Is there such a thing as love, or is it just another kind of fairytale painted to mislead us all?
What is the difference between caring and loving? Can one really be totally 'in love' with someone?
We’ve been given the impression that to define love is near to impossible.
Maybe there’s a fear that if we define it, it would somehow be less powerful... less impactful... less exhilarating.
Maybe we like the mystery of it. But is it really that complicated? Perhaps the complications surrounding love come from all the 'stuff' we add on to this powerful emotion.
What do you feel when you love someone? If distilled down to its core components, what would those be? Yes, love is an emotion, a feeling, we know it feels good, but what specific feelings, wantings, and beings are present when we feel love?
Here are the common denominators of love. Love is accepting. Acceptance is labelling someone as okay and having no particular desire to change them. Who they are is perfectly fine with you. You pose no condition on whether you will love them or not. This is called unconditional love.
Appreciation is one step beyond acceptance. It’s when your focus is on what you like about one another. We look at them and feel this sweeping appreciation for what they are: their joy, their insights, their humor, their companionship etc. When someone says they are "in love" with another, they mean their appreciation is so enormous for this person that it consumes their every thought.
We want those we love to be happy, safe, healthy, and fulfilled. We want them to feel good in all ways, physically, mentally and emotionally.
We don’t always express our love. Love is a feeling and the expression of that feeling is separate. It’s an action. There’s a practical reason we don’t always express our love for another. It’s an issue of time. We only have 24 hours in a day (if you make it up that way). If the expression of love was a core ingredient to love, we would have to be stingy with who we loved, because there simply wouldn’t be enough time to demonstrate our love for everyone!
If you see the distinction between the feeling and the expression, you can then love endless numbers of people.
IMAGE: VERY URGENT Photography
3 Comments – Post a comment
..Dazzle..
Commented 10 months ago - 4th July 2011 - 15:32pm
This is realy good :) i enjoyed reading it.
Kinghamster
Commented 10 months ago - 4th July 2011 - 15:50pm
This is an awsome piece of writing and it's all so true brilliant!!!!!!!!
cindyCLIC
Commented 10 months ago - 13th July 2011 - 09:59am
I think when you care about someone, you want the best for them. When you are in love with someone, you want to be close to them, be with them. When you love someone, you most definitely care about them. When you care about someone, you don't necessarily need to love them. Have I just made it more confusing? :S