This Thing Called Love

   

What is this thing called love?  Is it a feeling, an emotion?  Or is it like intense liking?  Is it a spiritual thing?  What exactly is this thing called love.

Our frame of reference for love is usually based in the emotional realm through an experience with another.  For instance, our idea of love might be from the memory we have of a girlfriend our first- or our parents or siblings.

Yet we use the word to describe affection for innate things like "ice-cream and "football and "beer. We say, "I loved that movie last night.   "Loved?  Did we fall out of love this morning?  What do we mean when we say, "I love that movie, that we "liked the movie? 

Modern society portrays love as a "condition.  So long as the condition is met love is there. When the condition retreats or disappears love retreats.  We fall in love and at first we do not notice any perceptible flaw in the object of our affection.  Yet as time goes on those flaws become apparent and we find that "first love begins to wane a bit.

People divorce because of the perception that the other person is no longer meeting their individual needs.  Which leads to the belief that the original motive for "falling in love in the first place was based on "How can this person fulfill my needs?  Therefore we enter the relationship for selfish motives and we leave for even more selfish motives.

So can we say that love is a selfish emotion?  We would have to if we were to go with the definition of society.  It might also be a sad end to all the romantic dreams of the ages. If we are to think love only came simply from selfish motives, then why all the songs and poetry?  Why then have there been all the movies and plays that portray a more selfless love?

In ourselves we know of a higher idea otherwise there would be no works portraying a higher idea.  Therefore there must be a higher motive.  Men have died for "love of country.  Romeo and Juliet died for a love forbidden by their families. A mother or father would die for the love of their child.

Therefore there must be a higher idea of love, and subsequently love is greater than just our selfish motives.  


 

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