What is Love?

[Severin Viper]

What does love mean to you?

The reason why I'm posting this is because I'm currently listening to "I Will," from the old FMA, or Fullmetal Alchemist. And it got me thinking, what do I think about the way I love people?

To be honest, I'm not a people person. At least, in public. Plus, I study people before I actually "talk" to them.

Getting away from the point though, I view love as... something chemical in the brain, but also something immeasurable. Or rather, incomprehensible.

Love, to me, is important on loving yourself before loving anyone else. I learned that the hard way.

Now that I mention it, I'm still learning.

So how do you love?

P.S. If this didn't make any sense, please let me know, and I'll try and fix it.

 

[Doctor Oak]

Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.

 

[Rex]

Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. Like all emotions, it is a complex psychophysiological experience of one's state of mind interacting with environmental and biochemical influences. Philosophically, love is a virtue, representing all of humanity's kindness, compassion, and affection. It may also be understood as part of the Survival Instinct of humans, banding humans together against menaces and facilitating the continuation of the species as a whole.

In English, love refers to a variety of feelings, ranging from simple pleasure, to interpersonal attraction. It may also refer to the passion and desires of Romantic Love, to Sexual Love, to the emotional closeness of Familial Love, or to the Platonic Love that defines friendships. This diversity makes Love difficult to consistently describe, even in comparison to other emotions.

Psychologically, love is a cognitive and social phenomenon. Many psychologists view it not as a feeling, but as actions. Erich Fromm, for example, states that the feeling of love is superficial in comparison to the commitment to it through a series of loving actions over time. He holds that it is truthfully a commitment, and adherence, to said loving actions over a duration of time. Finally, he said that while Love may begin as an involuntary feeling, it is continued by conscious choice, as after time the feeling is not longer depended on, only conscious commitment to one another.

TL;DR: Love is difficult to define, but several theories suggest it starts as an involuntary feeling and grows into a conscious commitment over time.

 

[KoL]

Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.

 

[Yoshimitsu]

 

[Teapot]

 

[Magpie]

Hmmmm...

I'd say love is something without definition, because it changes. There are also different kinds of love, so it depends on which sort you're referring to. I love my family. And I love my friends, and my pets. They're all different sorts of love. If I had to describe it somehow, I'd say love is unconditional, where as just liking someone isn't. You can't help love. My little brother used to do my head in when we were both younger, but no matter how angry I got at him, or how annoyed, I'd always help him (even if we were in the middle of a fight) and I never stopped loving him, because I couldn't. It was unconditional.

I've had lots of friends, and over time, most of them have come and gone. My school friends were good friends at the time, because we shared the experience of school. But once school was over, were drifted apart because there was no 'love' there. On the other side of the coin, I've known my best friend since we were both four. As we've grown up we've become completely different people, and we really don't have much in common, but the love is there so the friendship overcomes that. That's what love is. It lets you forgive the flaws and get past the differences. 'Tis unconditional

I'd say you find love, or something equivalent in most pack/group bonded animals, such as Wolves. It's something that's evolved or manifested in order to aid survival. If a wolf breaks its leg, the rest of the pack look after it. That can only be out of love, because that wolf no longer serves its purpose, or aids survival.

That's my take on it. I'm not even sure half of that made sense as I was typing it

 

[Blazi]

Love is a chemical reaction in the brain that thoroughly SCREWED up the whole 'survival of the fittest' thing going on.

But aside from that, love's fine.

 

[Zozma]

Re: The Question of Love

To me, love means sacrifice. Even the tiniest things, like purchasing food that you don't like because the other person does or watching a movie you think looks dumb because the other wants to see it. Parents sacrifice a lot for their kids in the name of love, for example. My sister has given up a lot for her kids, but it just means she loves them.

 

[Drakkon]

Complex, yet simple. Known, yet obscure. Kind, yet cruel. It is the truth, yet full of lies. It unites as well as separates. Most of all, it creates as well as destroys. And in the words of Dream Theater, "Love is the dance of eternity..."

~Drakkon

 

[Secad MS]

Love is interesting. It is a combination of evolutionary advances to help increase the chances of reproduction, an idea to be analyzed with philosophic logic, and simply an emotion aroused by stimuli releasing hormones. It has different levels with different components, but my psychology classes say it is composed of different levels companionship, passion, and commitment.

 

[Dark Soul]

I have to agree with Secad. Love is perfectly biologically explainable, although that doesn't mean you can't give a more poetic meaning to it.