Definition of Love

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SeekerOfTruth

Unemployed, but Looking
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I have seen the word "Love" used a great deal in my life and I was wondering what everyone's definition of "Love" is?

To start, here is my definition:

To care about a person (or persons) more than you care about yourself.

I feel this way about my children, parents, and significant other. I care more for them than I do myself and therefor I sacrifice things for myself in order to provide for them.

How about the rest of you? What is your definition of Love?
 
SofT ...

I don't feel that 'sacrificing things' is a matter of love ... It could very well be an expression of guilt.

To me, the question is: Would I give my life for him/her/them?

The answer is only valid if a situation arises that requires it ... and you do.
 
The tragic approach to love there from Chagur. You can never truly know if you love someone until you die for them. You can never know if you are loved until they die for you.

Have you been watching Romeo and Juliet a little too much?

But then it is often the tragic that elicits the deepest emotions....
 
Captain Canada ...

Just a crotchety reaction to a word that is used so often, and in so many different contexts, that it has become almost meaningless.

Can still remember the reaction of my ex when she half-seriously commented that she felt I 'loved' Bianka, my German Shepard, more than I did her.

My immediate, 'should have bitten my tongue', response was: "I know she'd give her life for me ... You, I'm not so sure about."

The unfortunate part was that my comment was prescient ... a couple of years later Bianka was killed protecting me. Still miss her.
 
Wove.... twue wove....

I completely disagree with the first definition, although that's what's been pushed about as love in the past few years.

Romeo and Juliette was a play about two spoiled children who had no clue what love really was,

Love is desiring nothing but the good for the object of your love, whether it is your pet, or another person, or even a society. Love, of course, then does not exist for objects. This also means that you do not cater to their every whim. If something is not good for them, if it is harmful, a lover will keep their beloved away from it. A loving parent doesn't give their child dynamite, no matter how badly they want it.

Loving is not always easy. Some times it is a bit of work. And most importantly, love is not a feeling, it's not a flutter of the heart, or a light-headedness or any of that. it is a deeply held state of mind. Hope this helps.
 
Re: SofT ...

Originally posted by Chagur
I don't feel that 'sacrificing things' is a matter of love ... It could very well be an expression of guilt.
...
Click to expand...

Chagur,

I agree absolutely. That was not what I was trying to say. What I meant was that I care for them so much more than myself that I would be willing to sacrifice for them, not that sacrifice is the only form of love.
 
Re: Wove.... twue wove....

Originally posted by Riomacleod
Romeo and Juliette was a play about two spoiled children who had no clue what love really was.
Click to expand...

OK now I've heard it all! Because they were spoilt they could not fall in love? :rolleyes:
 
Love and Sacrifices...

We each have our own sort of value system (hopefully)--and one that makes sense. What I love and/or value will be held above all other things, all other people.

It's no sacrifice to do anything for someone who's worthy of my love. A blood relation or a wedding ring don't instantly make them worthy, however. It's an ongoing process of change and discovery. Calls for understanding and like-mindedness. Calls for an appropriate give and take. With children it calls for patience --everlasting it sometimes seems. :)

When I do care...when I do love...I do so very much...

~~~

My 2 cents

Counterbalance
 
I in another post quoted something I thought was from Aristotle, but I think I picked it up and may have polymorphed it a bit from the internet.

<CENTER>"For True Love to be, takes Two bodies and one soul"</CENTER>
Click to expand...

The meaning for this is at first you feel in life a void, because you have half a soul. Somewhere out there is someone that also feels that same way, but when they meet with you (or you with them) you feel a whole soul that is shared with them.

This attractive feeling is beyond that of superficial feelings and is deep enough to know that your suppose to be together.

(Of course this can be similar to Aristotles remark on a Friend being "someone that shares the same soul")

I remember someone mentioning to me that they didn't like to use the word Love because so many people use it so often, and seem to lose it's meaning through it's use.
(i.e. they "Love" their wife but they don't fulfill her needs or She says she loves you, but shes seeing your friend when your not there)

So this gives the understanding that you shouldn't say that you love someone unless your heart burns with a passion of desire as to bequeath them their every whim...

Oops.. getting a little carried away :eek:
 
Originally posted by Stryderunknown
....
The meaning for this is at first you feel in life a void, because you have half a soul. Somewhere out there is someone that also feels that same way, but when they meet with you (or you with them) you feel a whole soul that is shared with them.
....
Oops.. getting a little carried away :eek:
Click to expand...

Stryderunkown,

Wow! You put into words what I have thought for a long time. I have always felt that there is someone out there who, to use the corny words from a good movie "completes me". There have been times where I have felt like I have found that person, but the feeling was not mutual so they could not have been that person.

Now I totally agree with this defnition for Love between adults, but how would you define love of children? Hopefully not only in the terms of survival of the species or propagation of our genes. :)

And it's all right to get carried away, to some extent, where love is concerned as that's the whole point isn't it? :D
 
Love..

..is the essence of life, the energy that makes everything want to come into consciousness. It´s feeling of belonging wherever you are, because the love is your true home. That is what you are made of. :)
 
Love, not to be confused with desire.

There is no sacrifice in love. When acting out from love there can be no loss or gain. Love is a constant. It energy so pure and alive that it obliterates everything else. Love is the highest and most basic reason for excistance.
It can be beamed out of your being forever without ever draining the source.

Ooooh I love :)
 
I don't think there is such thing as True Love. There is unconditional love - the love you have for your children, parents, etc. But even that could be a feeling of obligation twisted to something we would like to be called love. I think love is something the human mind made up - to try to differ ourselves from animals. Try to make ourselves superior. I think that if True Love DID exist, than every person we have loved that way, we would still love to this day. I THOUGHT I was in love many of times. But I dont have those feeling anymore. I think it was more like infatuation, or desire than love. And if it was Real or True Love, than I would still love them, right? Well I would really like to believe there is that 1 out there for me. But I think it highly unlikely. We just have to find someone that makes sense for us, and take it from there.
 
true love to me is summed up in one word


selflessness


wow..love is the most powerful force in this universe.
 
Selflessness

ACK! No!!!


Nononononononononononononononononononono.

Love is NOT selfLESSness. Love is, in fact, the most true expression of the human condition. It is acting in our nature to love.

Strgrl:
Simply because you haven't experienced true love doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I've yet to experience a guatemalan prison, but I do know they exist. Experiencial data isn't the litmus test for being. :)

Stryderunknown:

Love is not completion. The human soul is not halved. It is full, and complete. When we talk about love, I think that most people ONLY think of the traditional love... at best, you are searching for a kindred soul, not the jigsaw puzzle that makes your life complete (A reason many marriages end in divorce is because people expect their love to give them direction, purpose, etc).

To love is to desire the Good forever. (a reiteration). Parents want only the Good for their children. Lovers want only the good for one another. Strgrl is correct, when you love someone, it's unlikely that you will stop, unless they betray your love. The trick in this matter is that love is a product of the mind. it ISN'T a feeling. It's so much more. Its an all-encompassing attitude, which you participate in fully or not at all. It is the case that her feelings were erotic, not agapic.

We are also given a second definition of love. To beget the Beautiful. I.E. Creation is love. I would say that art is love, but art has lately degraded to the cynical emotion tampering of the postmodern period. At one time, politics was also a labour of love, but the cynicism of modern times has largely made it into a way for uglier people to become celebrities.

And for the record, Aristotle was on crack.
 
The trick in this matter is that love is a product of the mind. it ISN'T a feeling.

Then isn't it possible its something the mind made up? And by the way - I didnt say I have never experienced love. I have. 3 or 4 times. Yet I dont have those feelings anymore. Now that I look back, it was infatuation or desire or whatever you want to call it. I really hope I meet someone who I will love forever, but like I said - its highly unlikely.

Someone who has never experienced any form of love in their life, will be pretty hard to win over in this argument.
 
Hey... whoa... back up the truck...

Riomacleod, you are hot on the trail of a good and accurate definition of love, imo, but "feeling" is going to enter into love somewhere along the line (for virtually all people), though it may not be a continual component.

Also...

"Feeling" and "Love" are going to be defined differently by everyone who's encountered these things. For example, one man's love, is another man's lust...etc... No matter what he's told by others, lust will always equal love in his head, heart, body... Is he confusing physical feeling with love? Well, by some people's definitions, most certainly! But for him, it was nothing less than pure love. His experience; his happiness. (Not mine, but I don't live his life.)

Other feelings play into it, too. Or emotions. It all depends on how you look at it, and many don't look at it with an 'accurate' definition in mind. Love is something different to them with every new relationship--be it love with another person, a place, or a thing.

I like your view of love even if I differ with it a little. I think it's a cardinal sin to give over so much of ourselves to others in the name of anything, including love itself. I don't want whomever I love to give me what does not belong to me, (their self), and vice versa. I have no right to ask that, and could never accept that kind of 'sacrifice.' What I do give to such a mate will be given freely and will not be a sacrifice. We would both see it that way.

I can only love that which properly values itself, lives according to his/her own standards, and that can value me for doing the same. A win-win situation. Once we begin sacrificing even a part of ourselves to others, someone is set up to lose something. May not miss it right now, but we will eventually. Seldom do such sacrifices balance out.

We're humans, and this approach may not work perfectly every step of the way, or even work for the majority, but the rewards are worth the efforts. I prefer the "two wholes" walking in tandem approach.

As for Aristotle being on crack... Hey, they ALL were on crack in those days. --or lead-poisoning, or potent wine, or something... but not everything Aristotle proposed was off the mark. All of the earlier 'philosophes' contributed something worthwhile to our present understanding of everything, even if some of them showed us the ways NOT to think.

Your post brightened my day--thx!!

~~~

Counterbalance
 
Originally posted by *stRgrL*
The trick in this matter is that love is a product of the mind. it ISN'T a feeling.

Then isn't it possible its something the mind made up?
Click to expand...
how is feeling not a product of mind,after all the final analysis is done by mind only?so much for sensor's signals to brain,i agree with you that love is a product of mind only.very true.
 
CB: I'm not just hot on the trail... I'm simply hot ;)


Seriously, Strgrl, simply thinking that you're in love doesn't make it so. I've believed lots of things that I've found to be false when they were really tested. The reasons you don't have the feelings anymore is because, simply, feelings are modes of yourself. They are transient... in the big picture, anyway. Attempting to make an infatuation/crush/whatever last forever is the reason why marriages mostly fail. I think that's why alot of divorces happen.. people still love one another, it's just that the Eros has faded to a routine.

Here's how to know if you've ever experienced love, Strgrl. Go back and think about all of your previous "loves". Do you still wish good things for them? Do you still want them to grow as people and flourish? That's what love is.

CB: Ok, back to you. First of all, thank you for the compliment. I appreciate it, and since this is what i've chosen as my profession, I hope that I do do a good job at it. Secondly, I have never had a problem separating the Eros feelings from the deeper love that I've had for any of my significant others-when I have actually had deeper love. I'm not going to diminish emotion, it is a powerful motivator. In my philosophy, Love is greater than a person. It's what you could consider a cardinal force or an infinite mode, and it is part of The Good, the basis for an infinite reality. Emotions, on the other hand are a finite mode of a finite mode-specifically, me. Now I have a few reasons why Love has no basis in emotion. The addition of finite objects can not make an infinite object. An object can not be more real than it's creator-or the process in which it is created. Finally, how can a mode of myself become greater than myself?

Experiencially, I suppose I can talk a bit on Love's bastard child infatuation. The biggest problem with the world is that media-art, literature, and mass media advertisment-have bastardized the true meaning of love. This is a by-product of Existentialist/Romanticist propaganda in our society, a system that's been gradually eroding culture since the end of the civil war. (this is the same reason Newton gets credit for Calculus instead of Leibniz... even though his models were what Einstein uses later). Anyway, it's true that we have these feelings. I will never deny that I have had crushes on lots of women. Hell... almost every one I see, I'll admit it. There's nothing wrong with the feeling, but it does eventually go away... it takes time, but eventually there's little infatuation left... and if you wind up not loving your partner... there's no reason to stick around.

Infatuation is a sense of newness, the thrill of the mysterious stranger that your partner is... it's necessary to realize that we have these feelings, and work through them... enjoy them while they last, but realize that feelings are different from modes of being.

Edit:
Oh, and the above is why I don't try to do philosophy with similies and metaphors.
 
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