It's pretty rare that a query leaves me quoting scripture from the Bible of all things, but I've yet to find it better than:

1 Corinthians 13
Love
1If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,[b] but have not love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Footnotes:

a. 1 Corinthians 13:1 Or languages
b. 1 Corinthians 13:3 Some early manuscripts body that I may boast

1 Corinthians 13 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)

Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society
[NIV at IBS] [International Bible Society] [NIV at Zondervan] [Zondervan]

almost everything you write seems to provoke me. thank you for that.

Love...
Love is exactly what we want it be. We create it with our own perspective, with our expectations and reactions. It is as simple or as complicated as we choose. If we become brainwashed then it is because we desire to be lost in the madness of love, we revel in it. Roll around in the world of emotions until we stink from it : ), especially those of us who are more logical and detached most of the time. Can we experience love in its pure form??? I often wonder this.... and my answer is no - not until we release the fear of experiencing it fully and all the implications that come with it. Because to love as deeply as we desire then we must also trust as deeply, and unconditionally, and we must be more honest with ourselves than we have ever been... confront the shadows that within us dwell and accept the shadows of the one we love... unconditionally. To truly love is the ultimate release... I think when it happens then we will find that we expect nothing, that we hold it to no set standard, that no matter what the other person does we know that it doesn't make a hole in the way we love them, it doesn't change a thing because they are only being who they can be and listening to the sounds of their own soul. As far as how much pain it can cause.... it only gives credit to how real it really was. the pain will teach us so many things and is just as necessary to eperience as it was for us to love the one that caused it. and even though you may think that the wound will heal poorly and you will never be able to offer someone all of you.... in time you will realize that the pain is part of all of you and in some strange way has taught you how to feel love more completely than you could before.

"... the great aim of every human being is to understand the meaning of total love. Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with."

You can't simply love, you must love someone. Because of this, love is also that sense of more that you experience when with another. You sense how the other experiences life because they share. This, then, becomes part of your experience, part of your truth.
"...freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels frees, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.
And the person who loves wholeheartedly feels free.
...That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it."
An individual can only express love in a way that allows the other to express love without restriction. There is no need for definitions, or structured roles. Love is a sense of being simultaneously protected and being completely free.

Love differs greatly from infatuation. Infatuation is that sense of being swept up in a whirlpool: no matter the danger you allow yourself to be
drawn in. With love, you open the door and freely walk in. What is there is created by you and, when allowed to grow, it allow for that which is brought in by the other. Love is created by one, but becomes a shared entity as the energies grow together. Unlike two trees growing permanently into each other, the shape of love is ever changing.

Because love is active energy, it despises inertia. Love must create, be created, recreate, and be recreated. Love is a source of constant renewal. If you freely come to love you can take from it the needed energy for rejuvenating your soul. It doesn't dissipate, though, because when love is freely offered and accepted it can never truly disappear.

I can't exactly put love into words but...

I loved cartoons when I was a nerdy lil kid... many years later, I still love cartoon.

as a teen I used to love watching musical, I seldom watch 'em now. my love for them has changed. (damn you, Family Guy!)

i love my family and friends. there's prolly a couple people who I dislike and don't talk to anymore but I still worry for them and hope they're doing okay and/or getting help. my friend Wil told me that it's not in my genetic make-up to be mean. I may think bad things but they will never happen cuz my conscience is a 7 foot, 320 lb body building bouncer that kicks my ass out of "club evil".

Love is many things to some people. love the only thing to others. to be in love, to love, to be loved, to fall in love, to fall out of love, to love but not in love with, to crush on someone wondering: am I just infatuated w/ this person cuz they're new or am i falling in love?, to have an unconditional love for someone dispite what they've done to you (when is this "unconditional love" not healthy... spousal abuse, maybe. they still 'love' this person while ignoring what others telling that it's wrong. they may call it unconditional love while others call it insanity.)

Who am I to say what love is exactly? it is what it is. everybody's experiences are different so person A may not respond the same as person B.

i remember hearing a song by 50 Cent where he's telling a girl how he feels... "I love you like a fat kid loves cake. You know my style. I'll say anything to make you smile." this has got soo much meaning for me cut I used to be the fat kid growing up (and no I'm not fat I'm just well built!) and I love cake. So girl's... if you every get the privilege of hearing me say this to you it's cuz I mean it and of course it'll get a smile outta ya which'll make it that much sweeter for me. cheesy, I know, but who gives a damn what I think. love and let love.

these are just a few thoughts that've crossed my mind. who knows... maybe I'll hop on here some again and write some more. since I'm gonna live to be 110 years old, that's gonna be a lot of love to experience. And maybe I can fine tune my answer.

QUACK QUACK AND ALL THAT
EL QUACKATON (this name is Zay's creation inspired by Kimberley... I kinda like it. it sorta has a reggaeton meets duck vibe to it!)

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to be sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one - not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safely in the casket or the coffin of your selfishness. But, in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, unredeemable. The only place outside heaven where you can be safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love, is hell.
- The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis

Love is a word in the English language. It's come to represent many different things to many different interpreters and that can even change based on context. It's always been my opinion/belief that this complex crystaline structure of ideas we refer to as emotion is entirely too intricate and convoluted to be easily categorized with a word such as "love." Well...really any word for that matter.

Each and every emotion (even a memory of an emotion) is completely unique unto itself, only sharing very general similarities to other ideas experienced before it. Human experience is cumulative and builds upon itself, manifesting in such a way that we have to constantly so angry at Charlene for sending me that email and cc'ing the entire team, but once more information was incorporated I understood that her actions were careless rather than malicious and my emotional response adjusted appropriately.

To answer the *real* question that I interpret here, is that "Love" is grasping for communication and mutual understanding between a number of vested individuals. The word itself is an attempt to convey an immense realm of experiences and behavior responses to another individual with the same level of complexity of understanding...all via some woefully inadequate sound uttered through the lips. Why do we try to communicate at all and instead of just being content with feeling the things we do? I think it's all part of the same thing. The intense emotion goes hand in hand with the intense need to communicate that emotion...the drive to be understood, to know you're not struggling out here all by yourself discovering that you've got it all wrong. Feedback.

Maybe that's what Love is. A sustainable communicative feedback loop.

Plato's dialogue, the Symposium, reports on a dinner and talk party held in Athens sometime in the 3 or 4 hundred BC. It was a real party, since there are two other reports (Xenophon was one, I forget the other) about the party that confirm both the people who where there and the topic of discussion, which was Love.

Despite the fact that mostly the discussion assumes homosexual love, what is said applies to the hetero kind also. One of my favorites is the definition that Aristophanes comes up with, the soulmate theory. That love is when you find you other half, when you and your lover complete a whole that was only two halves before. His image is of a complete person being a perfect sphere rolling around the heavens which is split into two halves when it comes to earth, and we spend our whole lives looking for the other half. And if by chance we find our other half and consummate our love, we become one, turning into a sphere of light and ascending into the heavens, leaving all earthly care behind.

It's been way too many years since I studied this dialogue, though at the time I spent nearly a year and a half on it, taking one class, and doing teaching assistant for two more classes. To get somewhat dry and pedantic, there are six, seven or eight theories of what love is discussed in here. Socrates plies his method on the various personalities present, but resists giving his own definition, even when the late arriving Alcibiades shows up and makes a real effort to pull it out of him. Passion, demon lover, creative spirit, something along those lines -- the person who fires you up to incredible temperatures and like that. When your heart pounds and your self melts into a puddle, catches fire and springs up to create the most wonderful of wonderful things you are capable of creating.

We don't have very many people these days with the kind of stature that Alcibiades had. Kind of a combination of Douglas MacArthur, Patton, Eisenhower, Roosevelt (both of them), and Kennedy rolled into one who was also a superb athlete and heroic soldier back when soldiering meant face to face combat. Unfortunately, also a big touch of OJ Simpson that ended up getting him banished more than once, only to be brought back by popular vote. What does love mean to such a person?

Me, I don't know what love is, I know about turning to mush, about having most of my thoughts centering on another, about making a commitment and seeing it fade and disappear. or simply not be reciprocated. sometimes I think there must be another half, sometimes I'm not sure it matters, sometimes I wish I could be more light hearted, sometimes I wish I weren't so serious....