What is love?
...althy, and fulfilled. We want them to feel good in all ways, physically, mentally and emotionally. We don’t always express our love. Love is a feeling and the expression of that feeling is separate. It’s an action. There’s a practical reason we don’t always express our love for another. It’s an issue of TIME. We only have twenty-four hours in a day. There just isn’t enough time in a given day to love everyone that we wish we could. If only we could distinguish between the feeling and expression of love. Like Haroun in the book Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salmon Rushdie. Haroun goes above and beyond to help his father reclaim his gift to tell stories. Not many people would put themselves in such danger for someone else unless they really truly loved them. Love expressed is when you give your attention, your time, and your focus to someone. Webster defines attention as “the giving of one’s mind to something.” There are many ways in which we give our attention to another. We use our five senses; our ears, to listen: being completely present with the one who is speaking. Our eyes, watching one another: giving them your undivided attention. Tasting/smelling? (I’ll let you figure that one out). Touching: giving a hug, holding a hand, a caress, or a sexual expression. How you express your love depends on the type of relationship you have with that individual. We establish relationships with many different types of people, our family members, neighbors, co-workers, friends, spouses, significant others, etc. We’ve been taught that the love is different depending on who we love. We even have different names for it such as spiritual love, sexual love, passionate love and compassionate love. The emotion of love is the same regardless of who you feel it for. You want them to be happy, you accept them as they are, and you appreciate the aspects about them. So if love is the same, why does it feel different depending on who you love? The distinction in the loving experience is apparent when we look at how we express our love. The emotions are the same, but how we express it is different depending on who we love. You may want to spend more time with your friends than your family members. You might enjoy different activities with your co-workers and you do with your spouse. When and how we express love is determined by preferences. You may prefer to spend more time with someone who is outgoing, rather than quiet, or more serious rather than silly. You may be more physically attracted to someone who is short rather than tall, or younger rather than older. There are an endless number of qualities that we might prefer over others. And those preferred qualities determines who, when, how, and to what degree we express our love. This leads us right into our next topic: love clichés. The first step would be to define cliché. It is a word or phrase used to express an idea frequently overused. They are often used in commercials or advertisements. People also hold onto these “norms” and secretly long for them however. For example, who isn’t out there looking for Mr. Right, or Mrs. Right? Who is to say that there is only one “right” person out there for each individual? We have grasped this idea and have run with it because it is what everyone thinks we are supposed to do. But my question is what exactly is it that defines a love cliché as a cliché? What I mean is maybe to one couple holding hands is a cliché, but maybe another couple doesn’t choose to hold hands, maybe to them kissing is their cliché. Then we have to look at this more in-depth. Love at first sight is one of the more popular clichés that people choose to associate with love. However, does a cliché have to be so specific or out there, or can it just be walking through a park holding hands? Everyone does it, so therefore wouldn’t it be a cliché? Some common love clichés would be that of primary love styles and secondary love styles. Primary love styles would include: Love at first sight, based on physical attributes and mostly physical arousal; loving affection that develops over time, is primarily affection and commitment. Secondary love styles include: Intense preoccupation with the loved one, intensely jealous and possessive, in need of constant reassurance of partner’s love; looking for a compatible partner; and the selfless, caring without self interest. Many times we find ourselves trying to escape what we call clichés. A good example of this is the book Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. We don’t know if the narrator is a male or female, how old they are, or their ethnicity. The character believes that clichés are what cause the trouble in relationships; it changes how we talk about love. But is it really possible to escape all of the clichés? Is this character not looking for happiness, are they not searching for “the one?” This leads us into the battle between love vs. lust. Love and lust are inexpensively intertwined. Lust is ...