What is Love?

What is love? How on earth can anyone pinpoint any one definition to answer this age-old timeless question?


I am sitting in my office alone this afternoon, answering my daily leads on my desktop and jamming to some music on my laptop. The music has been going all day and I never really paid any attention to it, until the song "A Feeling Like That", by Gary Allan came on. "...Like lightening in my veins and thunder in my chest...I've been chasing that sensation half-way around the world with out looking back...and I can't find a feeling like that," he croons in that amazing ever-so-sexy voice of his.


I am a die-hard country music fan, so nearly every song I hear is about love, either losing it or getting it. There are so many ways to describe a...feeling like that. The easiest place at my fingertips to look is the jacket of any given country cd. Randy Travis describes it as..."deeper than the holler, stronger than the river, higher than the pine tree growing tall upon the hill. Purer than the snowflake that falls in late December, and honest as a robin on a springtime windowsill. And longer than the song of a Whippoorwill." (What a country way to describe anything!) Clay Walker puts in well when he sings, "Love is a rhythm of two hearts beating, pounding out a message, steady and true."


After thinking of just these three songs, my philosophical mind starts racing and filling with ideas. I decided to use the world's most accessible researching tool, the Internet, to do a little shopping on what some others thought. Webster's dictionary describes love as: (n) a deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness (v) to experience deep affection, passion, or intense desire for another.


I sat back and thought about this definition for a minute or two. One word of it stuck out at me: passion. In thinking of passion, I thought of one other thing: sex. I sat back and pondered this for a minute too. An I the only girl who associates passion with sex? I think not!


There are many things that I am passionate about: animal abuse, gun control, Ted Nugent, wranglers and cowboys! I think the only thing Jake is passionate about is having a lot of money, and maybe about fishing. However, for me, the words passion, love, and sex don't even belong in the same sentence together. They seem to only belong together in a romance novel or romantic movie. Jake and I neither one are romantic people, sometimes we even go a day or two without even hugging one another. What can this mean?

Don't get me wrong here, I love Jake, and I know that he loves me. But do Jake and I have passion? Do we feel that strongly about one another? (I know that it seems that I am getting way off track here, but bear with me on this one.) Again, I sit back and think. I sat back and thought about all of the couples I know, the ones who seem to have passion for one another and the others that are your average couple. In my circle of friends, relatives, and acquaintances, the average couple over rules the passionate ones time and time again. I thought about the couple in romance novels and the love story movies and the passion that they show to one another. I know that they don't really exist, but if someone can dream or act or write about it, then why can it just happen to me damn it?!? I was jealous and I couldn't help it.

First Corinthians 13:4-8 says: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

Wow! Nothing like a good dose of Bible-lovin' to put things into perspective for you! How can I have a passionate relationship when I fail nearly everyday at most of the things listed above? Now I am not going to go into detail about my relationship and what needs worked on between Jake and I , if anyone out there reading this knows either one of us, well then you know that we have been through tougher times than most, that is not what this post is about. Although I can defiantly say that after writing this post I am going to work a lot harder on achieving a more passionate love life, (not meaning physically, but emotionally and spiritually).

Now that that seems to be out of my system, I will get back onto a straighter course. The following are various that I found online while looking up different things for this post. I am such a sucker for quotes.

"Love is blind."
"Love is a fire that reigns in the heart."
"Love is a journey, not a destination."
"Love is the one word that frees us from all of the weight and pain of life."
"Love is the only true happiness in the world."
"Love is the only true adventure."
"Love is friendship set on fire."
"Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale...Love loves, this is it's nature."
"Love is like war: easy to begin, but hard to end."
"Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."
"Love is more than just three words muttered before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other everyday."

"Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it...it really is worth fighting for , risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more." I love this quote; I mentioned before that Jake and I have been through a lot...I used this quote in defending my relationship to my dad last Christmas.

Reading all of these quotes, and the two other pages I found but didn't post, makes me think yet again. Jake and I are passionate! Obviously we don't ogle over one another and call the other one by disgustingly idiotic pet names, but we do care for one another deeper than what I often give credit for. Reading the quotes solidified all of my so-so feelings and made me feel more confident about my relationship. We both love each other; I would be lost without him in my life, and I know he feels the same about me. That is what love is. That is what's important.

Sarah Jessica Parker said once as Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City: "The most exciting, challenging, and significant relationship of all is the one that you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous." Hmmm...that's another quote that I have had in the back of my mind for a few days now that I have been pondering. (Sort of goes hand-in-hand with this one: "Attention is the most basic form of love; through it we bless and are blessed.")

Think of the love between a woman and a man. Think of the love between a parent and a child. Think of the love between two friends. Think of the love between siblings. Think of the love between a pet and their people. Love is such a strange thing. Curious how many different kinds of love there seem to be and how different people interpret them, huh? Just some food for thought.