Love, it's a very powerful word. It brings peace and harmony to this chaotic world. With love many a people have brought peace to the world.
The word love has many meanings and manifestations. The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes. Due to this diversity of meanings, it is difficult to define love. As an abstract concept, love usually refers to a deep feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Love involves concern for the other person's welfare and feeling.
Philosophically, where Anger is like fire, Love is like Ice. It is cold, calm and strong and brings coolness to the surrounding. Most often when we love others, others will love back and peace will permeate in the environment.
I love my spouse (romantic love, intimacy, commitment, attachment)
I love my parents (respect, devotion)
I love my children (affection)
I love God (devotion)
I love Tennis, I love Movies, I love my car (impersonal love, attachment)
I love my job (commitment)
What is not Love?
Let's also understand what is not love.
Infatuation: A teenager falls in love with another teenager. Many kids and young adults feel crazy about Hollywood stars, Musicians, Singers etc. That is not love, but infatuation. Infatuation is the state of being completely carried away by unreasoned love; addictive love. Infatuation usually occurs at the beginning of a relationship. Usually infatuation lasts for shorter period of time. Longer lasting form of infatuation is called Limerence, which can have pathological consequences.
Passion is an emotion of feeling very strongly about a person.
Friendship between two people may exist and might be liking each others attributes, characters, but it is not love.
Manifestations of Love
Various manifestations of love are self (narcissistic) love, romantic (erotic) love, filial love and divine (agapic) love.
Love for self is the lowest form of love, and believe it or not is one of the strongest. We as humans love ourselves first. Even if we love others, the root cause would be to have reciprocation. To recount a story, King of Kosala Pasenadi and Queen Mallika were both disciples of Buddha. One day the king casually asked the queen, who does she love the most, expecting his name to be mentioned. But to his surprise, queen said that she loved herself the most. Normally, any other king would have banished the queen for saying such. But king said, strangely even I had the same realization during my mediation today that I love myself the most.
Love most often means the romantic love between people. This kind of love is necessary primarily for progeny. This kind of love lasts for short amount of time. There are many memorable and tragic stories between people. Love between these people and their sacrifice is memorable. Some such pairs are Romeo Juliet, Laila Majnu, Heer Ranjha and their love seem to be eternal. The Taj Mahal in India is one of the greatest symbol of love. Mughal emperor Shah Jahan was so much grief stricken by his third wife Mumtaj Mahal's passing away, that he immediately started to build a tomb in her memory and today people from all corners of the world visit Taj Mahal as a symbol of love.
Filial love or love for family is the next kind of love. This kind of love builds strong families, and good societies. One story from Hindu Mythological story Ramayan recounts that King Dasaratha could not bear the separation of his eldest son Rama and died with grief. Another story from Mahabharata, the blind King Dhrutarashtra was so much attached to his wicked son Duryodhan that he allowed the war between the family members and in turn was the cause for the destruction of entire Kaurava clan. It is believed that Humayun the eldest son of Mughal emperor Babur was sickly ill. Babur with love for his son, circled his bed and cried out to God to take his life and spare Humayun's life. Historians dispute this claim, however it shows the strength of love for children.
Divine love is the most important and highly regarded love. People following Judaism, Christianity and Islam belive in Abraham their patriarch. With divine love, he was about to sacrifice his own son as an offering to God. Meerabai, one of the famous devotees of Lord Krishna, once drank poison as proof of her devotion to God. Divine love is infinite, unconditional and pure. When we are able to display this love even in traces, will serve a great deal to the society. Compassion, forgiveness are some of the forms of this divine love.
Conclusion:
One of the most important longing for all human beings is to love others and be loved by others.
For some love for self is the strongest, for some love for family is the strongest and for some love for God is the strongest.
Selfless and unconditional love is the purest love of all.
Persian Poem
- Even after all this time
- The sun never says to the earth "you owe me".
- Look what happens with a Love like that!
- - It lights the whole Sky. (Hafiz)
