What is the Meaning of Love

What is true love?

What is the meaning of love?

Is it love, that what I feel for him/her? Or is it just attraction?

Thoughts like these have swirled through my mind countless times. But they've never answered my query about how does one know if they're in love. Growing up had me dealing with a fair deal of crushes, and every time I had one, I'd think it was love. Young age does that to you. I now know that those crushes weren't signs of being in love. Not Even Close. Between me wondering whether my crushes were the real deal, and finding out that they most definitely were not, life happened. Life and life's mundane (yet poignant) experiences, taught me a lot of things. Love happens. Just like life happens. And you can't do squat about it. So don't even try. What is the meaning of true love then? I shall brave an explanation in the following lines.

What IS Love?!

Is it possible to constrict love into a meaning? Or should we just about leave it here? OK let's not get all spiritual, alright? And, I talk about the romantic kind of love when I ask the question What is the meaning of love? Just to have it cleared.

Is it Attraction?
So what is the meaning of love? Is love defined in the way your heart beats when you come across that special someone? Or is it the way you wait for them to show up? Or the way you look out for him/her every day? Or the way he/she turns you into a blithering idiot every time he/she smiles? Of course all these things could be considered love. The initial stage. The very initial stage, from the stages of love, that is. That warm fuzzy feeling of love that everyone keeps talking about? This is it. In other words, attraction or lust.

But is that what love is? Most probably not. Love is more than this physical attraction that novels and romance flicks strive on. Then what is love? In really simple words if we have to say it so?

Is it Something Deeper?
If mere attraction is not love and it does not answer an affirmative to the query 'what's the meaning of love', then what is love?

You know what? Love runs deeper. It cannot, and should not stop at attraction. Love needs time to grow, love needs you to have spent enough time with that person to know what he/she is through it all. How do you know if you are in love? Run through all the motions of life with them -

• What are their failures, their likes, their dislikes?
• What makes them tick?
• What drives them about?
• What they look like in the throes of a very bad cold?
• What would they do if you were ever in trouble?
• What does their morning face say?
• How the color of their eyes is brought out by the bright blue shirt.
• How they chew a little more from the left side of the cheek.
• How they crinkle their nose every time you light an incense stick.
• How that hickey on the neck makes them a little conscious.
• How they act like a child when they are sick.
• How they argue with all their might.
• How their nostrils flair, every time you're in a fight.
• How they act all jealous when you leave them out for friends.
• How they over react about some things. (Something you'll never understand)
• How they argue about human rights with all their strength.
• How they get all disgusted with the callous attitudes of politicians...
• What their silence really means.
• What they..........................

And more, much much more. The mundane and the life changing. THAT is what you need to know. And only time allows that. Time will help you develop an understanding of the other person so deep that you know them like you know your own self (almost, almost).

Is it Understanding and Acceptance?
Is it understanding and true acceptance to know all their quirks and to want them anyway? To know how difficult they can be at times in your relationship, and yet to accept them as they are? To not want to think of life without them? To not want to change them for anything? I believe that it is.

The truest love will not place any conditions and probably expect nothing in return. But that is highly impossible. It will make you want to change for the better though. Yet love comes with its set of expectations, and expectations will cause pain. Being in love does not debar you from hurt. It is not a magic potion that you drink and become immune to sadness. It is not a pill that constantly promises a floating-in-the-air kind of high. It is just you and him/her. Together through it all. With nothing you'd want to change at all.

It is rather a way of life with a person you trust, bond and share with. Someone with whom you can laugh and cry. Someone with whom you are your true self with no room for pretensions. Someone whom you respect and crave for like crazy, all in the same breath. Someone you are secure around. Cannot imagine your life without. Accept them as they are. And love them no matter what. That is love. What is the meaning of love? That is the meaning of love.