rj_anderson | What is love, anyway?

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What is love, anyway?

And if that subject line started Howard Jones running through your head, you are a true child of the 80's. :)

Seriously, though, I'm speaking to a women's group in just over a week's time and the subject is "love". I thought it might be interesting to start with some definitions and opinions from the general public, and since we're such an articulate lot here on LJ, where better to solicit some?

So. How would you define and/or describe love, in two sentences or less?

Any responses I do use will be kept strictly anonymous, so feel free to speak your mind. Thanks! I look forward to hearing what some of you have to say.

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Love is the state where another person's happiness is absolutely essential to your own.

Love is a single word used to refer to far too many different things. And I want all of them! =;o}

(Don't forget to take an NT Greek dictionary along...)

Love is NOT infatuation--which can be physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual.

In the mid 80s, I was buying electronic music & recording magazines that had demo tapes on the covers (I forget the titles now). I remember one brilliant pastiche of all the recent UK hits that had the word "love" in the title. One verse featured the lines:

"...and poor old Howard Jones
just doesn't know what love is anyway -
He finds it so confusing.
Well I may be wrong,
but here goes another love song!"

...And into the chorus, which is a twisted fusion of the choruses of "What is love anyway" (H Jones), "Love on your side" (Tomson Twins), and so on, ending with a final tagline of "Look - Of - Love!" (Whoever that one was).

Wish I knew where that tape was...

Look of Love = ABC

I want that tape, too!

Is it storge, philia, agape, or eros you're asking about? (C.S. Lewis's voice ringing in my ears...)

This is the best I could muster here at 9 AM, CST:

Love is an overrated emotion and an underestimated way of living. It is most intense when centered on one object, and most fulfilling when extended to many through love of God.

Man, depending on your starting assumptions about love, that could be dirty. Hmm.

Behaving in a manner that puts the other person's good first.

Fawn

When you do things for someone else because you want to, not because you have to.

If I could sum up what love is in two sentences, I wouldn't be writing whole books trying to figure it out... but hey.

Nice answers. Except that, IMHO, the problem with saying that love means putting someone else's good first (and I'm sure this is not true for the people posting here, but it can be) is that it allows the lover to determine what the loved one's good is. And I think that's inherently dangerous. It can be as innocuous as "I think you should prefer roses to lily-of-the-valley" or as serious as "I think you need psychiatric committal" -- and yes, sometimes the latter needs to be said, but interestingly it ends up being said more frequently by those who also say the former.

Anyway (before I get jumped on by half the commenters) it is marvelous to put someone else's good before your own; even more marvelous, IMO, to balance that with a substantial dose of letting the loved one choose what that good is without pressure.

"What is love? 'Tis not hereafter.
Present mirth hath present laughter.
What's to come is still unsure."

Not a good philosophy for anyone interested in committing to a serious relationship, but I think it has a germ of truth. Love as though you would die tomorrow? Don't put it away for a rainy day? (even if it raineth every day) Don't be afraid of love? (Now that sounds like a song lyric.)

Verbosity, c'est moi. Shutting up now.

I think that love is characterized by the earnest desire and concious choice to put another's good above one's own; to the point that you truly care about their well-being more than your own. On the other hand, you have a point that it can be dangerous, in a way -- but I think that ties in with the idea that "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak". Love, in itself, is pure, and anthing but dangerous IMO -- but our efforts to show love, and to actively put another's well-being ahead of ours, are not always successful and can sometimes be influenced and thus corrupted by other factors. It's not our nature to be selfless.

Of course, you also have a point in saying "don't be afraid of love". It can't be perfect, and won't be. Love is a challenge. But don't the most difficult challenges often reap the greatest rewards?

Love is a lot of things I don't understand, but one of the things I do know is this: It's a focus, or attention, or awareness of the other with a willingness for it to be not all on your own terms.

Someone told me once that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference, and I believe that wholeheartedly. Not because I think love is defined by strong emotion, though strong emotion often comes into it, but because indifference often works by channeling strong emotions into self-centered thought and behavior. I may say I love someone because I have strong feelings about them, but I may think and behave with a complete disregard for their real needs and wants. I may still call that "love", but it has subtly become indifference. If I hate someone, on the other hand, I give them a kind of agency as an antagonist, and that might lead to reconciliation, or understanding, or some situation in which I change for the better.

I don't know if that makes any sense. All I know is I have a lot to learn about loving.

I like what Marsilo Ficino said about it: "It is the desire for union with a beautiful object in order to make eternity available to mortal life."

Someone else said love is about extending ones self out of oneself to interact with another, thus bringing about spiritual growth to one or both.

In whatever form, love is bringing the spiritual to the level of the mundane, in order for the soul to aspire from the mundane to the spiritual.

That's my bit o' philosophy for today. :)

Val

Love is being happy when the person you love is happy and wanting to help when the person you love is upset or worried or sad.

Love is what you think it is.

It's not two sentences, but will three sentences do? :)

"Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends."

Or, if you want the exact version, Charity being pure love:

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity denvieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her bown, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

"Love" is a socially-created delusion that serves to mask how it should truly be expressed.

Cynical, much? That's what I used to think, anyway. Not so sure I do anymore. I tell my former opinion because I have not had such a concrete conclusion since then. What I meant by it is that people are given the idea that there is Great True Undying Love, when in fact such a thing is fictional because it depends on fictional circumstances, and people simply fool themselves into believing into things like passion. But I gradually discovered that many people don't care about the Great True Undying Love at all, or that perhaps it did exist, without being a delusion, just for people who had radically different mindsets to my own.

But my original conclusion was that people in generally are too occupied with romantic love and forget platonic love, which I consider more important: the love between family and friends and even towards random acquaintances and general humanity I believe is the 'purest' kind of love.

And the good feeling itself? Not sure. Ideally a kind of selfless interest in and caring for another person, bound in with empathy and compassion. I used to think that all good emotions and virtues proceed from Love - with the exception of Hope. :)

When a being is utterly powerful but chooses to become utterly vulnerable to the weakest of creatures, that is love.

Love is mistakenly believed to be an emotion, but is in fact perfect action/communication from atom to atom, soul to soul.

Love is what one feels for the universe when one recognizes that the same divine spark inhabits you and everyone. Life is love, love is peace, peace is life.

(Hope that's not to cryptic, it's just how I think.)

Love gives, but does not need to receive.
Love is a connection between souls.

My favorite description of love is:

"There is no remedy for love, but to love more."

And 10 points to whichever house can identify the author.

Naomi, looking for my Howard Jones cd's.

The question as stated suggests a bit of a definition fallacy, treating a word as though it had meaning independent of usage. (Sorry to bring it up; those really do drive me crazy, though.) Presumably what you really mean is: "What content do we usually associate with the word 'love'?"

And, similarly-- I'm assuming that you'll be discussing this in a Biblical context-- you could go on to ask (or perhaps you were already planning on this sort of approach): What does 'love' mean in 1st Corinthians 13? What does it mean in John 3:16, or for that matter 1st John 3:16? How about in Ephesians 5:25-33 and Colossians 3:19? How about in John 21:15-17 (or maybe it means a couple of different things there; or maybe not)? What does it mean in Genesis 44:20? What about in 1st Samuel 20:17? Or-- for a really ugly example-- what about in 2nd Samuel 13:15?

-- Dr. C, long-time bachelor (for reasons that are probably obvious at this point) :-)

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What is love, anyway?

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Love

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What is Love? (anyway, does anybody love anybody anyway)

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What is Love, anyway?

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