lurkette

Love is such a huge, amorphous term that I can't imagine defining it as a single thing. I'm surprised nobody's brought up the Greek concepts of eros, philia, agape, and storge. I'm not the right person to expound on them, but I'll take an initial stab and let others elaborate:

I don't remember the exact translations/definitions, but I think they were something like this:

eros: romantic/erotic love
philia: friendly love
agape: "universal" love
storge: familial love

I kind of remember that agape sort of encompasses all the rest - all you classics scholars correct me if I'm wrong - that it is the unconditional love for all of mankind/creation that is at the heart of every being, but that in humans is shielded/forgotten and must be rediscovered. I don't know if it can be translated as "compassion" or something like that. I've heard it described as "Christ-like" love.

I really do believe that there are only two fundamental emotional states, each with nuances of course, but at base they are the foundation for everything: love and fear. One can't be where the other is. I suppose one could rationalize and say that really, all there is is love, it just takes different manifestations. I find it hard to believe, though, that things like murder or rape or abuse could in any way be derived from love.

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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

- Anatole France

Jonsgirl

Love is...well, you could say that love is everything or nothing. I think that depends on your experience.
What I know is this:
Love is real. And real love can survive. Love is the best feeling in the world. And the thing that you can do the most damage with. Love is less than what the poets speak and more than most men dare.

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Someday, someone will best me.
But it won't be today, and it won't be you.

gobman

Well to me 'love' is just something that i don't really notice after awhile, it's basically just a feeling of deep respect for the person and they can do things that can piss me off yet my feeling doesn't really change.

But that was me describing love in like an i love my mother way. The real good shit is being 'in love' that's like the best shit in the world, it's like smoking really good weed or something, a way i can usually tell is if i find someone really attractive but sex doesn't really some into my mind

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Please, talk to me, I have serious father issues.

ForgottenKnight

My current thoughts on love (not a definition of what love is):

Love is eveything yet nothing.
Love is everywhere yet nowhere.
This world is full of contradictions. Love is suppost to be everything and everywhere, but rather it is nothing and nowhere. Where has all the love gone?

A true friend loves always.
I love always and am always a true friend, so why is it not returned? Hense, once again, where has all the love gone?

Love is as love is. It just is.

Love is letting go.

True love is loving even when it's not returned.

True love is living the moment, and never wanting the moment to end.

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"People say I'm strange, does that make me a stranger?"

GarytheSnail

Love is an evolution of a friendship. Love is wanting to be with someone, no matter where they go or who they become. Love is forgetting how someone looks, but remembering what they said.

minyn

Love turns you into a blithering gob of goo. and its fun!
love makes you appreciate the small things but it makes you forget the big things in life. Love makes you want to give up everything and have no qualms about being yourself. Love makes us unpredictable but at the same time you can always guess what will happen next. Love lets us get hurt but it can give you feelings unpresidented. Love is a sensitive subject that everyone can relate to. Love can be as extreme as hate or as mediocre as friendship. Love brings insight to the shady and skews our views of the understood. Love clouds your mind and sharpens the eye of your heart. Love makes us compromise or fight harder for what we are. Love makes us feel HUGE or feel tiny. Love can make us feel useless or worth more than the world. Love brings peace and turmoil. Love is as time consuming as it needs to be. Love is personal but everyone knows it.

And you know what? most of us wouldnt give up either side of love. i know i wouldnt.

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"Woke up this morning with a blue moon in my eye"
~A3 "woke up this morning"

"Don't compromise yourself, you're all you've got." -Janis Joplin

la petite moi

Love is happiness. Love is learning to trust someone. Love is being able to 'touch' someone whenever [wherever] you want.

Crapfully yours- Lily.

insidious_machinae

Love is being generous...WITH YOUR WEINER.

la petite moi

Everyone ignore that last immature person...

[Just my weirdo Lover.]

Hehehe, just kidding.

insidious_machinae

I'm not A weirdo. I'm YOUR weirdo. Wait...you said that.

insidious_machinae

I agree with GarytheSnail that love is an enhanced friendship.

Love is being able to know a person inside and out, their innermost secrets, and darkest desires, yet still getting totally surprised on occasion.

Love is all or nothing. Either you're completely in love, or you're without it. There's no inbetween in my eyes.

Love is doing regular things about the house, in each other's company--washing dishes and getting each other soapy, snapping each other in the ass with towels fresh from the dryer, reading a book together late at night under a blanket....

That's love to me.

Cosmo Girl

Love is when any amount of pain is worth dealing with, any obstacle or challenge is worth overcoming, any distance is worth crossing, any amount of time is worth waiting just to feel the way you do in that moment when you're with the one special person who can make you feel like everything is right in the world and you will always be happy, and with whom you know he/she feels the same way about you.

Mr. Moe

Love can be either of two things, one optimistic, one pessimistic. The optimistic approach is that love is the height of attachment to a person. You'd die for that person, you'd die to be with that person. Love makes even the most boring spontaneous, the most cynical hopeful, the most logical a ball of emotions. It just has that effect on people, and it is arguably the greatest thing a person can experience, that complete devotion to someone else, it is so special words can barely describe it.

Pessimistic view is completely biological. It is just chemicals in the brain pumping us with endorphins just so we want to reproduce and continue the species. Simple, logical, effective.

Depending on my mood I subscribe to both of these, more the prior rather then the latter for the last couple of years, as I have some faith in humanity now, plus the first one has a lot more potential for future happiness.

Eldaire

Love is real. In love, I'm not so sure. We definately love our close friends, God, our family, etc. But I'm not sure if we can be in love with one person over all others type thing, y'know? I think that in love is a combination of love and lust.

Torinn

This whole thing bugs me. How can anyone compare love to chocolate (Assuming that we are dealing with real love, not heat of the moment passion) Real love is not temporary. Love endures betrayals and emotional swings. If some of you want a world without love, then I truly pity you. When you consider the fact that everyone screws up, then you better hope someone has feelings deeper about you than the logic of the moment, looking out for number 1 mentality. While love is not logical, it is meaninful. Love is faith in those who will betray you and hope in those who will fail you. It will happen, you won't benefit, but you will continue, and that is the point.

dragon2fire

pity ha

i do honestly belive that the vast majorety who veiw love as not existent are not looking for pity

i accpect the world for what it is and i really dont see love any were in it

lust sure love in the sense of protecting others yea i see that to but true love no that does not exist

Torinn

Does it matter whether they are looking for pity? If thats how you feel, then what do you define as the reason people do illogical things like care for people who betray them?

dragon2fire

i belive people do those things because they are foolish

do whats logicall this seems a good way to live life to me

Torinn

foolish, perhaps... but it seems to me that logic like that only seems to work until YOU need something from someone else. If the world were logical, most of us wouldn't be here. Reality is cold, but perhaps love is how we cope...... we may have created the idea, but that doesn't prevent it from having power.

dragon2fire

i dont ask people for help ever i do help people

why you might ask because i belive that being nice to people is a reward on itself

nope you realy on others you will get burned it really is that simple


am i a cynic well yea so what i have my reasons for being cynical

but i have never been accused of being a sheep

Torinn

I don't disagree with most of that, though I am very curious why you personally think helping people is a reward for itself? maybe that is love?

As far as reliance on other people, it sounds like you've been lucky enough to not have to rely on others. Some people are born into situations where they have to rely on help from others.

dragon2fire

i belive that because i belive in subjective truth is that the right term?

i think the cloest thing to ilmortally is having good deeds you have done still affecting people well after you died

i am not looking for my name to be put with the deeds just for my deeds to have a affect i for one dont call that love

i have had my fair share of bad suitouns in my life but i have discovered were there is a will there is a way

maybe i have been lucky if so hears to 80 more years of luck

Torinn

Leaving the world a better place, eh?
Whatever you choose to call that, I see it as a loving thing. It is generalized but still sounds fairly loving. It just sounds like you are saying that you doing it in general is okay, but for one person to do something similar for a specific other person is foolish. In both instances, good things are being done without care for rewards.

dragon2fire

Good deeds i do and this is important are not for love

they are for ilmortally i want my infulance to be around for ever

maybe the end result is the same but the reasoning is imporant at least to me

Torinn

But why GOOD deeds? Anything you do will affect the world for decades, but they don't have to be good deeds. Why do things that are morally good or helpful if not for love?

dragon2fire

the key is that they affect peoples actions and for leathey peroids of time good deeds seem to do that better then hurtful ones

Torinn

Do good because it is a more efficient way to affect the world? I don't know if I agree that good intention accomplish that better than evil ones, but anyway about it, that is a very Cold outlook.

dragon2fire

i dont deny i am a very very cold man i am also happy with life can all you people you belive in love say the same


hmm i wonder

Torinn

I can only speak for myself, and since I need sleep desperately, I will have to end here for the night. I have found that the more I learn of the world, and the more I believe in things, the less happy I am. That doesn't really bother me though, because I think that truth (as I see it) is more important than happiness. Ignorance is Bliss, and yet I have chosen to seek knowledge. My opinions could be wrong, but believing makes it worthwhile, and also allows me to find Joy in deeper "truths" whether they can be proven or not. Eventually I hope to have a more meaningful happiness in knowledge than I could ever have had in ignorance.

dragon2fire

O i am all about questing for knowledge that is the very essence of my life i have simply conculded that love does not exist

meembo

I think love is being selfless, in large or small ways. What I don't know is if the longing that accompanies romantic love is part of love, or something else.

It's reasonable to be cynical or skeptical about love, but I think idealists are the greatest lovers. Love is almost a direction or orientation of emotion, a watershed that flows more one way or another. Idealists see a purity or a meaning in ideals that satisfy basic wants, which cynics see as ultimately unobtainable. Idealist love more powerfully because the movement towards the ideal is what matters, not the goal itself.

That's what unrequited love is, isn't it? Throwing all of yourself towards someone/something that you may or may not ever get to touch? And I think we would all agree that the luckiest ones are those whose loves are reciprocated.

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less I say, smarter I am

sailor

Depends. If Im *in* love, its great. If Im feeling jaded, or overly cynical (which seems to be pretty often), love is nothing more than an evolutionary process designed to facilitate procreation, thus furthering the species.

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"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
--Plato

water_boy1999

There are several different levels of love. You can love your family, which I do immensly. There is nothing I wouldn't do to protect them, to help them in time of need, to support and be there always. This is unconditional love. No matter what, I will never fall out of love with my family.

Then, there is love for an SO. I have only been in this type of love once....recently. I heart was broken in the aftermath.......I have been so careful to open up myself totally and completely to a woman. But, I did for her because the heavy feeling I had in my heart, the lump in my throat, the raised hair on my arms, the thought of her being the first woman I wanted to have children with....I defined this as being in love, not the same lust I had felt for many women before.....

The following song describes the way I think quite well. I heard it many moons ago and it has stuck with me.


Eurythmics Love Is A Stranger lyrics:

Love is a stranger
In an open car
To tempt you in
And drive you far away...

And I want you
And I want you
And I want you so it's an obsession

Love is a danger
Of a different kind
To take you away
And leave you far behind
And love love love
Is a dangerous drug
You have to receive it
And you still can't
Get enough of the stuff
It's savage and it's cruel
And it shines like destruction
Comes in like the flood
And it seems like religion
It's noble and it's brutal
It distorts and deranges
And it wrenches you up
And you're left like a zombie

And I want you
And I want you
And I want you so it's an obsession

It's guilt edged
Glamorous and sleek by design
You know it's jealous by nature
False and unkind
It's hard and restrained
And it's totally cool
It touches and it teases
As you stumble in the debris

And I want you
And I want you
And I want you so
It's an obsession

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Doh!!!!


-Homer Simpson

Mantus

I wrote this last year, not my curent view, which i am to lazy to write down at the moment, but still gives insight.


It is quite possible that when we humans gave thought to our attractions, devotions and relationships with with other people we were frightened by what we saw. We saw selfish intentions and instinctive decisions. We saw what we always viewed as our most distinct quality as a species, our relationships with others, was the most animalistic of all. To safeguard our sanity, and keep away the guilt, our minds made up the concept of love. Therefore lifting us once again above the other animals.