Definition of Love

What is love? This is perhaps the most important of all questions, that you will ever ask in life. While I do not claim to know the exact definition, I know one thing for sure. The answer cannot be found in the pages of a dictionary but in the pages of the book of life as you write it. With love, everything is possible they say. With love there is order. Without love, there is chaos. Without love, nothing makes sense. Love is perhaps the simplest and the most difficult concepts to grasp ever. This word is used so indiscriminately and in such a distorted fashion nowadays, that it is difficult to see what it really is. It is not something to be seen but experienced for sure. Let us embark on a journey together and try to find the definition of love.

One way of defining something is to exactly put it in words, in a particular context. How do you define something as completely encompassing as love, when the mere act of restricting it in a specific context, distorts its meaning?

How about trying and defining what it is not. That way, when we try to see "what love is not", knowing "what it actually is" will perhaps be a lot simpler. That's going to be our approach...

What is the Definition of Love?

As a word, love is used so carelessly nowadays that the real meaning of it is drowned in confusion. People are imbibed with the impression of romantic love portrayed in movies and marketed by businesses. However, a few experiences of romantic encounters in real life tend to make people cynical about this entire concept when their hearts are broken. Please just keep aside all your previous notions about the definition of love. Let us freshly explore what love is with an open mind. We will go on asking questions, whose answers may lead us to what is the definition of love, what it really is.

Is Love Attachment?
Attachment is conventionally known as one of the signs of falling in love, but is love attachment? You love your family, you love your wife, you love your car, you love your friends and you love your dog. You are intensely attached to every one of these things. What happens when they are taken away from you or they leave you? When you lose all these things, you get hurt, angry, helpless and immensely sad. That's because, you live under a constant fear of losing all these things. Attachment has fear built into it or rather attachment originates out of fear. When attachment breeds anger, hurt and helplessness, can it be called love? Where there is love, there is no fear. Ergo attachment is certainly not love.

Is Love Pleasure or a Desire to Possess?
When people are asked how do you know you're in love, they point towards attraction and intense longing for a person of the opposite sex. Many perceive love as a sexual desire and intensive attraction that one exclusively possesses for a person. As human beings we are constantly in pursuit of pleasure and perceive love as the ultimate form of pleasure.

However, what happens when the object of desire doesn't reciprocate your feelings? The feeling quickly turns towards disappointment, even hate, as your advances are spurned by him/her and they prefer another mate. Then follows jealousy, pain and ultimately disruption of peace of mind. When you follow the path of pleasure and get to pain, you can be sure that what you felt was desire and not love. Then, if love isn't ultimate pleasure then what is the definition of love. Let's keep exploring our perceptions of love further.

Is Love Duty or Responsibility?
Some see love as duty and responsibility that you have towards someone or something. However when you do things out of responsibility or duty, unknowingly you do feed your ego with 'I did it', 'I was there' and many more such 'I's, which only leads to a bigger ego and you unknowingly expect something in return. When you are in love, you do not feed your 'I' but enrich 'We'. So duty done with an enhancement of self worth or improvement in self image, cannot be love. It can be narcissism at best. So duty is not love.

Is Love Exclusive or Conditional?
Is love exclusive? Does love come attached with conditions or strings? When you limit love and there is exclusivity, possessive feeling, comparison and attachment inevitably creep in. We all know that exclusive possession and attachment breed fear of losing and ultimately lead to jealousy. What we do call our love does get restricted and leads to pain and disorder eventually.

So what is the true definition of love? If it isn't attachment, desire, pleasure and responsibility, what is real love. To get to the root of it, one must perceive what makes us incapable of true love? That one thing must surely be the origin of attachment, pleasure, jealousy, anger and desire. If we can cut off the origin of all these negative emotions, may be we will see the first glimmer of what love really is. That one thing is the 'I' around which we build the empire of 'all that is mine'. We fail to see love when blinded by the ego whose primary function is the pursuit of desires and pleasure. Where there is no 'I', there can only be love. Where there is I, love can never be truly experienced. I am in no measure an authority on this topic, but this is what I feel about love.

Personally, I find it very difficult to let go of my ego, but I guess it is the one thing that must be destroyed if we must have any hope of perceiving real love. Then there is no 'I' or 'You' or 'They' but only love. Take the 'I' and 'you' out of 'I love You' and all that remains is love. Otherwise, we can be satisfied with what are only the illusions of being in love. For me, love is where 'I' isn't. That's the definition of love for me.