A Conversation for Ask h2g2

Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 1

~ jwf ~ scribblo ergo sum

'Love is all you need', sang the Beatles. smiley - angel
But experience, mine or even the Beatles, would suggest there is more to it than that. At the time however,smiley - peacesign millions took them at their word. Maybe we just didn't understand what 'love' really is. smiley - cross

So, ..what is love?

With smiley - smooch Saint Valentine's Day hard upon us, I have been editing the 'Love Special' for AGG/GAG's column in this coming Thursdays h2g2Post. I've read just about everything available on the subject at h2g2 and seen a lot of different perspectives smiley - coolsmiley - crysmiley - cuddlesmiley - grovelsmiley - tongueoutsmiley - hugsmiley - cheerupsmiley - wowsmiley - cdoublesmiley - steam ..but I know there's more to it. smiley - flyhi

Later rockers sang 'Love Hurts', 'Love Stinks' and 'Love Is A Battlefield'.
One group even said 'Love Sucks'. smiley - yuk
C'mon it's almost Valentine's Day, so tell me.

What is 'Love'?

smiley - peacedove
~jwf~



Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 2

Mother of God, Empress of the Universe

Love is a mental hard-on.


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 3

Gravity Welles

Only love can break your heart.


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 4

I'm not really here

Love is...Hallmark.

Or so they would have you believe.


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 5

Cloviscat

A line in passing (in a murder mystery novel of all things) stopped me in my tracks at the weekend:

"Love is not a cement; love is a solvent."

That meant something to me. Love brings you together, but it's not the two of you, unaffected, but with this big lump of...something fastening you together (but keeping you 'frozen' at the same time. It changes you. All the same bits are there, nothing taken away, just rearranged in a new way, and fluid, sttill changing and developing.

Is that waaaayy too deep for this time in a morning?

- Cloviscat - still in love fourteen years after a certain bloke sat on her jacket at a Student Union Theatre far, far away...


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 6

the autist formerly known as flinch

"Love is the answer... and you know that for sure" - John Ono Lennon

and it probibly is.

Love is also the most lied about concept in human history - love is as said above, a cement, love is a panacea, true love, love at first sight, everlasting love - all these thing fallacys.

Love will not make your life perfect (sometimes it will make it worse); being in love does not make you happy, and if you are not happy when you are in love it does not mean that you do not love your parner enough, nor they you; i you love someone truely, it doesn't mean they love you back; love is not a constant, unchanging an unwavering; and it never lasts forever, just indefinately.

Love is the unconditional bond of respect and friendship between human beings - based on the recognition that life will be less without them.

The great books on the subject:

Love by Stendhal
Falling in Love by Shiela Rowbotham
and
'Parenthasis' in A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes



Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 7

Xanatic

I just liked the phrase "Love is a mental hard on" smiley - smiley

But we could probably learn something fron looking at other species. There are several animals that live together with the same mate for all their life, raise their kids together and die together. All without the aid of Hallmark cards or red heartshaped things.


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 8

Ommigosh

Hopefully, it is NOT true to say "If you gotta ask, you will probably never know".

See also 1 Corinthians chapter 13 in the Bible.


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 9

Great Western Lettuce (no.51) Just cut down the fags instead

Was it Rimmer out of Red Dwarf who believed that Love was a device invented by Bank Managers to make us all Overdrawn? smiley - smiley


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 10

Ek* this space intentionally left blank *ki

Victor Hugo was once heard to quip (in french I hasten to add) ... "Love is a heavenly breath of the air of paradise", although translated another way "To love another person is to see the face of god" ... make of it what you will.

Do you think it's possible to fall in love more than once?

I was in love or at least I was in what I believed was love. She was the first person I thought of when I woke up, the person who occupied my thoughts like no other was her. Our times together always seemed too short and the times apart like an eternity. Everything clicked ... then we started taking each other for granted and clicked out of time. At the time it was love and I honestly thought I'd spend the rest of my life with her, and the thought didn't scare me in fact it made me feel warm all over. Felt very odd when that feeling left me.

Who was the wise crack who said that it was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? In the immortal words of Tommy Lee Jones in MIB ... "Try it"

As to what 'it' is ... sheesh ... who knows.

It has to be said, smiley - loveblush does a pretty good job of summarising in smiley form ...


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 11

Researcher 179388

Love is wonderful, but it is also hard work.

It is easy to fall in love but in order for the relationship to deepen into something more permanent you can't take each other for granted, you have to each make the other feel loved and valued and accept that you may love them all the time, but you will also fall 'in' and 'out' of love with them constantly.


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 12

Mother of God, Empress of the Universe

Never fall in love. It sticks to your face. smiley - loveblush


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 13

$u$

As the Robert Heinlein quote on my user page says:

'Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.'

I think that pretty much sums it up.smiley - loveblush

Although Mina's Hallmark statement is probably the best representation of what Valentine's Day is about.smiley - winkeye

Sus


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 14

DoctorGonzo

What is love?

It's but a distant memory smiley - erm

Hey ho.


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 15

$u$

Or perhaps an unfulfilled dream?


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 16

Still Incognitas, Still Chairthingy, Still lurking, Still invisible, unnoticeable, missable, unseen, just haunting h2g2

Love is the upside of Hate.Without the one we can't make sense of the other.

Incog.


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 17

~ jwf ~ scribblo ergo sum


Thanks Pegasus for the Robert Heinlein quote:

'Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.'

smiley - cheers
I used it in our Agg/Gag 'Love Special' in yesterdays Post. A695711

peace
jwf


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 18

Corinth

Love is one word for many different things.


Feb 14 : What is love?

Post 19

~ jwf ~ scribblo ergo sum

Love is the mother of all emotions.

It raises, hope, jealously, anger, compassion, contentment and regret.
It can be the source of resentment, and even hate.

Some say hate is just misguided love.

About the only two emotions not spawned directly out of love are pity and fear. Pity is a form of contempt for those we do not love. And fear is our reaction to those who do not love us.

peace
~jwf~
*how many emotions did I miss? smiley - biggrin*


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