What Is Love?

As Valentine’s Day approaches, I began thinking about love and my question is what is love? The definition of love is different to most people. Some may say, “love is blind,” others may say, “love hurts.” The dictionary defines love a certain type of affection. According to Cambridge’s dictionary, love is the feeling of liking another adult very much and being romantically and sexually attracted to them, or strong feelings of liking a friend or person in your family. Paul wrote in 1st Corinthians that, “love is patient, love is kind, love never fails. 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 and 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. These words were written thousands of years ago in the Bible and they still apply in regards to our society today. We have heard songs about it, seen it in the movies and read about it in thousands of self help books. We all want to feel loved. We think about it, hope for it, fantasize about it, go to great lengths to achieve it, and feel that our lives are incomplete without it. So many legends surround this emotion, from the mythic heroine Penelope and husband Odysseus to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. What then, is love?
Love takes many forms, from the physical to the emotional aspect. Love can involve a blissful connection between two people or tear them apart. Love can also make us do irrational things. What’s more, we demand a whole lot of things which must come in that package of love, such as commitment, truth, honesty, sincerity, dedication and other ideals. We wish to live a life to love, to love whole-heartedly, but there is a gripping fear and uncertainty that plagues our decision to plunge in. We deny how tired we are of the constant let-downs. We deny that we are scared to hurt. We deny how badly we want to succeed. And most of...