A ShAdoW oF a WoMan

On Love:heart:

What is love? This question is so hard to answer. Can it ever really be answered—sufficiently, thoroughly, absolutely? I doubt it. I doubt if such abstractions can be conquered by words, limited as words are. Trust the human mind to come up with such complicated and complicating matters… haha. But anyway, what I really wanted to do was to share some of my favorite things said about love:

“Love is that enviable state that knows no envy or vanity, only empathy and a longing to be greater than oneself.”

– Anonymous
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“Intimacy [substitute ‘love’ for ‘intimacy’] is a four-syllable [substitute ‘letter’ for ‘syllable’] word for ‘Here’s my heart and soul, please grind them into hamburger and enjoy.’”

– Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy

(Though I disagree with the feel-free-to-hurt-me sort of sentiment, I must say that love does entail pain, and one would be an utter fool to think that love can only be all rosy and bubbly and warm and nice.)

“Love is an act of will—namely both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love… Love is the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional.”

– M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled

“You shouldn’t establish love upon something volatile—say, your emotions. People end up breaking up because one says, ‘I don’t love you anymore,’ or ‘The degree of love I felt has reduced,’ not realizing that, after all they’ve been through, love is not a feeling. It is a verb, not a noun.”

– Anonymous

“People don’t complete us. We complete ourselves. If we haven’t the power to complete ourselves, the search for love becomes a search for self-annihilation; and then we try to convince ourselves that self-annihilation is love.”

– Erica Jong, Fear of Flying

As for me, I think love and “falling in love” are two different things. That the feeling one gets when one falls in love IS love is an untruth, a misconception. “Falling in love” is just people’s genes trying to hoax and coax their otherwise sensible and rational minds into procreation. Love isn’t a feeling; it’s choice. And love isn’t supposed to make people stupid or crazy or just plain clingy; it’s supposed to make them learn and grow and mature—and that holds true for all those involved in a relationship of love. Well, that’s just what I think, anyway.

– Anonymous