Valentines Day is just around the corner, but what exactly is love? In this post, originally published on 28th August 2011, @miniwaffler looks at lives greatest emotion and how it effects all of us.
Love….
I consider myself a romantic, I love love 🙂
When it comes to people I give my all emotionally. I find it easy to develop philos love, that affection for friends and family. I’m not afraid to tell people I love them, to show them through actions. I’m a known hugger and yet find it strange when I come across people who are more restrained. They don’t hug, don’t say I love you, don’t hear “I love you”? Do I give my love too cheaply, have I too big a heart? Or have others lost the art of loving and caring for each other? Have they become love shy?
What is love? Why do we love? And how does it make us feel?
Love is an emotion. Strong affection and attachment, a virtue eg kindness, compassion. Central to religious beliefs, God is Love, an action towards others. It can also describe a variety of feelings, states and attitudes. For example, “I love that dress”. It can describe a generic pleasure to interpersonal attraction, like “I love my boyfriend”. Love is also linked to passion,desire,intimacy.
Charity: the act of human kindness or love, usually selfless. Giving and caring.
Platonic love: the prequel friendship to any sexual one, it is chaste but yet a strong love that is non-sexual and may always stay this way.
Romantic love: hearts, flowers, letters and songs; can lead to crushes, lust and love. It’s the pleasurable feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love 😀
“Today I found myself smiling for no reason…..then I realised I was thinking of you”. Unknown
Familial love: “storge” the Greek word for natural affection, eg parent with a child; it can describe the love that develops between exceptional friends; a love that develops out of affection, becomes sexual but then as the sexual relationship runs it’s course the ‘storge’ remains ie the friendship remains long after the sex stops, the significant other remains the best friend (some may call this marriage).
“The spaces between your fingers were created so that another’s could fill them in”. Unknown
Eros: the Greek word for desire, a state of sexual arousal, an insistent sexual impulse or desire. Others twin this with lust, can lead to infidelity.
Erotic love: is the fire the passionate side of love. Relevant, important, self-defining.
Love in all forms, moulds us. I’ve talked to those who have been surrounded in love, those who’ve been sheltered from it. The role of parenting, how children are brought up, how they are made to feel, interactions with each-other, reflects how they interact with others through childhood and in later life. I am not an expert, I just listen and observe. Self worth and confidence equally effect how you give and receive love, how you interact with others, how much you let people in.
“Sometimes people put up Walls, not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down”. Unknown
Religious beliefs effect how people respond to each other. God is Love.
“May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else” 1 Thessalonians 3:12 the Bible
“love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive” Dalai Lama
Love is a universal feeling and it satisfies the emotional needs of every human being. It completes us, moulds us, changes us. Without love, there is an emptiness that needs to be filled.
“Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice but falling in love with you was beyond my control”. Unknown
Understanding love, in all it’s many sides, let’s us feel, give and practice loving in a better and more productive way. No matter what our past, everyone has the potential to love and feel love.
“You will find the moments you really lived, are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love” Henry Drummond
Love is a many splendored thing.
Soapgirl
