What a beautiful and sweet and delicate and oh so desirable word. But wait, what does it mean exactly? Why is it some languages have a dozen or more words for love and English is stuck with one. Let us break this down about shall we. Oh sure, not another diatribe about love you say. Everyone talks about love. What more could possibly be said on the topic? Well now it’s my turn so tough.

Love, is it biochemistry, choice, lust, too much oxytocin or whatever other hormone/neurotransmitter might be involved? Who cares? Whatever the biology, we experience it so it’s high time to take responsibility for it. Instead of hoisting love onto some uncontrollable urge let us redefine the part of love, whatever part you want to believe, that is a choice (the whole choice/free will thing is a topic for another time). So we have the uncontrollable/controllable urge to mate, want to be with someone, and/or an infinite number of other things we want to attach to love. But in the end what we do about it is to some degree (and I prefer to think of it as completely but nothing is perfect ;) ) our choice. So let us choose to behave at least for that part in a rational, empathic manner.

If we take responsibility for the love we feel we can start to do beautiful things with it, instead of judging, being jealous, violent, etc, all the bad crap people claim comes with love. It is my humble opinion that the bad crap has nothing to do with love, it has to do with never having implemented being an empathic person. When we focus only on our own needs we tend to hurt everyone around us. When we focus only on other peoples’ needs we tend to hurt ourselves. When we can find a balance we can keep ourselves and other’s happy and with luck it will spiral out building upon itself.

Even if it does not build upon itself one can be confident that they are being what they desire to be.

So what is love? It is whatever we choose it to be. My choice is that love is a balance of meeting your needs and the needs of those you desire to love. I mean really, wouldn’t it be cool if you could do that?

P.S. If you figure out how please let me know.