On Love

It would be difficult, almost impossible, for a single individual like me to completely define love. For love reveals itself in different ways to different people. Here, though, I will try to take a general and objective view of love.

The concept of love is not new. It is as old as time itself. Since the beginning, we sentient mortals have sensed something in our social interaction and relationships, and called it love.

But what is love? Is it merely an emotion, as many have claimed? Is love just a great influx of passion and longing for someone or something, to die away eventually? Or is it more than just a feeling? Something more... divine, perhaps?

People say there are many kinds of love. An intense, erotic love of passion between newlyweds. Or a cooler, but more stable love between older couples. Or love between a father and his son, or a mother and her children. Or love between two friends that bind them together forever. Or love between a master and his servant, or a dog and its owner. Or complete, unconditional, divine love God has for his creations.

Which of these is love? Are they all love? Or are they all not love? Or are they all simply different aspects of love? Can any of them really define love?

But still, the base question remains unanswered: What is love? If someone were to suddenly ask me that question, my immediate answer would be that love is an emotional attachment that someone has for another person or object that causes that person to value the other person or object higher than himself/herself.

But even as I write that answer down, it seems rather empty and incomplete. Is love merely an emotional attachment? Isn't it more than that? Maybe. But I would also say that love is true unselfishness. However, I would be hard-pressed to say whether valuing someone or something above oneself is love itself, or merely an effect, or consequence, of love.

Taking the former as fact simplifies love as love=valuing someone/something above oneself. But choosing the latter brings up the answer that love=the cause of valuing someone/something above oneself.

So what is that 'cause'? Love, of course, is the answer. But still I am unsatisfied. What is love???

To be continued.

Questions to ponder:
1. Is love an action, or a reaction?
2. Can you love someone without liking him?

-Musings, by the ArchMage BenGarth