What is Love?
Definition of love
Love is one of the most profound and elevated states in which we find ourselves in.
It could be argued that the topic of love is the most discussed in human history and yet there exists no good definition of love that captures its essence.
Speaking of definitions, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines love as the following:
- strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties
- attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers
- affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests
However, does affection and attraction truly define love? Can affection survive betrayal? Can attraction survive loss of beauty? Is love something deeper than affection and attraction?
Quotes about love
Examining the words of the wise that have gone before us, provides some clues.
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
—Lao Tzu
“Love is the whole thing. We are only pieces.”
—Rumi
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
—Aristotle
“With our love, we could save the world”
—George Harrison
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
— 1 John 4:8
What love means to you
At the end of the day, love is something universal but also intensely personal. What love means to you may be different from what it means to another person.
A woman who was a project manager at a printing company found out that her father was diagnosed with Covid-19 and was hospitalized in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Given the contagious nature of the disease, she was not allowed to be near her father – and could only observe him through a glass window. She was devastated that she could not be with him at this critical time. So she tried to figure out a way that she could meet and talk to her dad in person, and not just through a hospital window. She learned from her cousin who was working at the hospital that the hospital had an open position for someone to stock the shelves, serve food to the elderly, clean up and mop the floors. Realizing that this role at the hospital would allow her to meet her father, she immediately applied for the role and got it. She was now able to spend time with her father from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours at his side when working at the hospital. We see what love means to this brave woman and how she chose to demonstrate this love by giving up a high paying office job to take up a manual job just so that she could be with her father.
In another real life story, a man who worked for a moving company arrived one morning at his client’s apartment building to move out furniture. As he was parking his truck, he heard a big commotion and a lot of people screaming. They were pointing up the building in terror. When he saw what they were pointing at, his heart skipped a beat. A small baby was clinging onto the railing of an apartment balcony on the 12th floor. She was hanging on for dear life and was about to fall. Without thinking twice, the man climbed up onto the roof of the parking structure and positioned himself below the girl and just a moment later, the baby fell. He managed to catch the baby but because of the force of impact, he lost his balance and fell down from the roof with the baby in his arms. The baby and him both suffered injuries and were rushed to the hospital but thankfully they both survived. Here we see another example of love in action. We see what love – in this case a love of humankind – means to this brave man and how he chose to risk his life to save an innocent baby’s life, to demonstrate that love.
What does love mean to you? How would you demonstrate your love?
What is love all about in a relationship
“Love is all we need” sang the Beatles. It does seem that love is all we need in a relationship. However, we do see relationships get affected and people falling out of love day in and day out. Why does this happen? What makes someone to stop loving someone? Maybe they felt that the other person does not care about them anymore? Maybe they felt that they were not there for them when they needed help? To love someone means to care for that person. To love someone means to help that person when they need help. To love someone means to understand that person and use that understanding to help them become happier and help them become the best that they can be.
Love is like the relationship of a gardener with his garden. Just like the gardener nurtures his plants, love needs nurturing as well. When not nurtured, love does wither just like the garden. But when nurtured well, love, like the garden is a joy to behold.
In his book True Love, Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh offers a refreshing insight into the nature of true love. In a simple, direct way with characteristic warmth he provides an overview of the four key aspects of love: loving kindness, compassion, joy, and freedom—describing how each of us can experience them in our daily lives. He also touches upon mindfulness which he believes is a necessary condition for love.
I will leave you with some beautiful from the book Intimacies: Poems on Love from the Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda.
With Her
This time is difficult. Wait for me.
We will live it out vividly.
Give me your small hand:
we will rise and suffer,
we will feel, we will fly.
We are once more the pair
who lived in barbed places,
in harsh nests in the rock.
This time is difficult. Wait for me
with a basket, with your clothes,
with your shoes and shovel.
Now we need each other,
not only for the carnations’ sake,
not only to harvest honey–
we need our hands
to wash with, to make fire.
So in this difficult time
let us face up to infinity
with four hands and four eyes.
Love
So many days, oh so many days
seeing you so tangible and so close,
how do I pay, with what do i pay?
The bloodthirsty spring
has awakened in the woods.
The foxes start from their earths,
the serpents drink the dew,
and i go with you in the leaves
between the pines and the silence,
asking myself how and when
I will have to pay for my luck.
Of everything I have seen,
it’s you I want to go on seeing;
of everything I’ve touched,
it’s your flesh i want to go on touching.
I love your orange laughter.
I am moved by the sight of you sleeping.
What am I to do, love, loved one?
I don’t know how others love
Or how people loved in the past.
I live, watching you, loving you.
Being in love is my nature.
You please me more each afternoon.
Where is she? I keep on asking
if your eyes disappear.
How long she’s taking! I think, and I’m hurt.
I feel poor, foolish and sad,
and you arrive and you are lightning
glancing off the peach trees.
That’s why I love you and yet not why.
There are so many reasons, and yet so few,
For love has to be so,
Involving and general,
Particular and terrifying,
Joyful and grieving,
Flowering like the stars,
And measureless as a kiss.
That’s why I love you and yet not why.
There are so many reasons, and yet so few,
for love has to be so,
involving and general,
particular and terrifying,
joyful and grieving,
flowering like the stars,
and measureless as a kiss.