Love - a person, activity, or object for which one has intense affection or strong liking; a chemical reaction. "Overrated. Biochemically no different from eating large quantities of chocolate." -John Milton, Devil's Advocate
love is like oxygen love is a many splendored thing all you need is love ::takes off judy garland wig and exits stage:: in catholic theology we learned there are 4 types of love. i'll be damned if i can't remember all the names of them. there is the affection/trust of an infant for it's parents or the people who take care of it. there is the attraction/loyalty towards friends. there is romantic love for a partner. there is unconditional, unselfish love such as between a person and a diety.
LOVE = unconditional commitment; not bound to 'warm/fuzzy' feelings; extending sometimes to discontent or death on behalf of the beloved; genuinely containing absence of self-interest, and total preoccupation with the happiness of the beloved
Love is what we call the confluence of emotions we feel when they are focused upon a particular person or object. ~Raithere
My personal definition of interpersonal love as most people experience it is, when you feel strongly about someone and are willing to set them free. It's that willingness to set them free that is love to me. Otherwise, it's just strong feelings combined with emotional attachment -- many people call this by the name of love, but i don't. ******* From zee bible: "God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him." - I John 4:16 "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear." - I John 4:18 ******* I also find this insightful: On Love by Kent Nerburn It is a mystery why we fall in love. It is a mystery how it happens. It is a mystery when it comes. It is a mystery why some loves grow and it is a mystery why some loves fail. You can analyze this mystery and look for reasons and causes, but you will never do any more than take the life out of the experience. Love is more than the sum of the interests and attractions and commonalities that two people share. And just as life itself is a gift that comes and goes in its time, the coming of love must be taken as an unfathomable gift that cannot be questioned in its ways. Too often, when love comes to people, they try to grasp the love and hold it to them, refusing to see that it is a gift freely given and a gift that just as freely moves away. When they fall out of love, or the person they love feels the spirit of love leaving, they try desperately to reclaim the love that is lost rather than accepting the gift for what it was. They want answers where there are no answers. They want to know what is wrong with them, or they try to get their lover to change, thinking that if some small thing were different love would bloom again. They blame their circumstances. They blame each other. They try anything to give meaning to what has happened. But there is no meaning beyond the love itself, and until they accept its own mysterious ways they live in a sea of misery. You need to treat what love brings you with kindness. If you find yourself in love with someone who does not love you, be gentle with yourself. There is nothing wrong with you. Love just didn't choose to rest in the other person's heart. If you find someone else in love with you toward whom you feel no love, feel honored that love came and called at your door, but gently refuse the gift you cannot return. Do not take advantage, do not cause pain. How you deal with love is how love will deal with you, and all our hearts feel the same pains and joys, even if our lives and ways are very different. If you fall in love with another who falls in love with you, and then love chooses to leave, do not try to reclaim it or to assess blame. Let it go. There is a reason and there is a meaning. You will know it in time, but time itself will choose the moment. Remember this and keep it in your heart. You don't choose love. Love chooses you. All you can really do is accept it for all its mystery when it comes into your life. Feel the way it fills you to overflowing, then reach out and give it away. Give it back to the person who brought it to you. Give it to others who seem poor in spirit. Give it to the world around you in any way you can. Love has its own time, its own season, and its own reasons for coming and going. You cannot bribe it or coerce it or reason it into staying. If it chooses to leave, from your heart or from the heart of your lover, there is nothing you can do and nothing you should do. Be glad that it came to live for a moment in your life. If you keep your heart open, it will surely come again. ******* "Paradise is always where love dwells." - Richter "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." - Oscar Wilde "The best way to know God is to love many things." - Vincent van Gogh "Intense love does not measure; it just gives." - Mother Teresa "If you who are seeking love and truth cannot rise above the illusion of turmoil, how can those who are locked in it be helped? It is you who are empowered through the strength of your love, your commitment to truth, who will bring about the elevation of consciousness of those who are wracked in such fear that they would destroy the world rather than acknowledge their own terror." - Emmanuel "The whole world could love you, but if you do not love yourself, you would not even notice. The opposite is also true -- the whole world could disapprove of you, but if you love yourself, you would not even notice. Accept yourself within you and the entire world becomes totally acceptable." - Bartholomew "Start learning to love God by loving those whom you cannot love." - Meher Baba "Unconditional love is learning to be the source of love rather than waiting for others to be the source." - Orin "Fear is a place that has not yet discovered love." - Orin "You learn to love by putting yourself in situations that challenge you to be loving." - Orin "Love is the doorway to enlightenment." - Orin "There is a love like a small lamp, which goes out when the oil is consumed; or like a stream which dries up when it doesn't rain. But there is a love that is like a mighty spring gushing up out of the earth; it keeps flowing forever, and is inexhaustible." - Isaac of Nineveh "Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill toward all men. Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart. When you rise to love on this level, you love all men not because you like them, not because their ways appeal to you, but you love them because God loves them." - Martin Luther King Jr "Life is a paradise for those who love many things with a passion." - Leo Buscaglia "A person desperately searching for love is like a fish desperately searching for water." - Deepak Chopra "Love is determined by the level of one's awareness. With an ego-oriented level of awareness, love is a neurotic dependency relationship characterized by jealous possessiveness." - Thea Alexander "Each love we share prepares us to more fully experience the better one which lies ahead if we just evolve enough to be willing to take the risk of loving again and again as long as we live." - Thea Alexander "Love is not something that goes on and off like a light bulb. It is not something that one day you have and the next day you do not. That is not love, that is emotion. I would like to remove all of the glamour about love from the mirrors of your mind, because until the glamour and falseness are seen for what they are, and you become aware of your true feeling tones toward the important people in your life, you will not know what love is." - Bartholomew "Love is your very essence, it is your very Being, and you have no control over it, for it is what you are. It is given, in the sense that it has been given to you by the Source. And out of it all things are created. So when you feel yourself to be in a state of Love, you will also realize that it is something totally out of your control. No matter who comes into your vision, Love is a reality in that moment. The strangest people can come into view and you will feel that upwelling of compassion and understanding that is Love. And this may come as a surprise, because you are so used to making very selective choices about the people that you will or will not love." - Bartholomew "If you feel you are a loving person, please look at that view of yourself very carefully. One of the greatest illusions that the ego most enjoys putting before you is the thought that you are a 'loving human being.' Love used in terms of sexual attraction, friendship, or parental instinct can be a device of the ego to make you feel that every day you are becoming more loving. How do you know if you are a loving person? It is so simple that it will be painful. You are a loving person if everyone who comes before you is one with whom you can feel compassion and understanding." - Bartholomew "When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you, yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you, believe in him... though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden." - Kahlil Gibran "Love alone can unite living beings so as to complete and fulfill them... for it alone joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and of the earth." - Teilhard de Chardin "Love is letting go of fear." - Gerald Jampolsky "Turn your eyes within, and feel the love of God that is there. Once you have done that with yourself, you will have the strength to display your love openly to everyone else, for you will know who you are and the depths of your love. Then you heal just by being." - Ram
Overated, biochemically not much different to eating huge amounts of chocolate,and thats pretty much a fact if you do some searches on the web.
A noteworthy professor of history once said:-- "You can consider the Internet the 'bathroom wall' of the research world."
The same sentence could describe hate, anger, familiarity, and the entire spectrum of emotions. Still it is not a definition of love. Love means fondness, tender and kind feelings, and inclination toward a person or animal. I don't like to use love with objects, because that's usually not pure love, that's a need to possess to satisfy the selfish needs.
