How Do You Know It's Love

You come home, and you are greeted with a big wet kiss from Sweet P.  You are walking through the grocery store when you notice a mother holding her seven month old child and smiling at him as he laughs back.  You are at a concert of your favorite artist.  As he/she performs a song, you notice the raw emotional expressions on the musicians faces and the artist.  You have just met the man/woman of your dreams, and you cannot stop thinking about him/her.  Everytime you think about him/her, it brings a lovely smile to your face.  What do each of these situations have in common with one another?  They all represent some type of love, how do you know it is love?  How do you know someone loves you, or that you love that special someone?

Anyone can easily determine if someone loves him/her based on the other person's actions.  When most of a person's actions towards you are positive, the feelings he/she has towards you comes from a positive emotion.  Actions from another person helps you guage the type of feelings a person has for you, but how do you know when you love someone?  If actions are used on one end, then the feelings are used on the other.  In order, to know if it is love you feel for someone think about him/her and see how you begin to feel.  When you spend time with this someone, how do you feel?  When you hug this someone, how do you feel?  When you gaze into this someone's eyes, how do you feel?  When you kiss this someone, how do you feel?  While doing these things, do desire it to never end?  While doing these things, do you become overwheled with a feeling that is so intoxicating you cannot fully describe it?  You feel similar....connected....on cloud nine....excited/nervous....hopeful....better than you have ever felt before.  The list goes on and on as does the story of love.  Continue writing your story of love, but most importantly, make sure you enjoy reading with the people and things you enjoy most!

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach. 

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Do You Love You Enough?

Do you love your family, friends, children, pets, etc. more than anything else in the world?  What about your spouse, lover, boyfriend/girlfriend? Do most people love the above items more than themselves, or should the situation be reversed in certain circumstances?  Can you distribute your love equally and fairly to various things without proper love of self?  Of course not, but how do you know if you love you enough?  When is it obvious that you are not loving you enough?  What are the warning signs and are they easy to notice?

Your relationships with others shine the initial spotlight on self love.  How you treat, think about, talk to, etc. your lover, family, or friends lets you know how much you truly love each of them which is a reciprocal of your self love.  Relationships with others make it easy to notice self love, but only a portion of the picture is revealed here.  The other part requires more effort since you must ask the same questions about outside relationships to yourself.

1) How do you treat you?
2)What do you think about yourself?
3) How well do you trust you?
4) How do you talk to you?

You can ask yourself these questions along with any others you feel will help uncover how deep your love is for you.  Once you discover how much, work to increase it daily because  you along with the many people you encounter in life will benefit.

"You must love yourself before you love another.  By accepting yourself and being who you are, your simple presence can make others happy." -unknown

Types of Love 2

Here we will discuss the remaining two types of love.  Unlike the first two types of love (storge and philia) eros and agape love are very different, but they begin the journey into a deeper type of love which we are still trying understand fully.  It is the main reason why I am writing this blog.  We enjoy probing the depths of love trying to uncover the great mysteries associated with it.  What has allowed love to capture our attention for many millenniums? Why have we not discovered the full meaning of love?  After discussing the final two types of love, this will reveal why these questions along with many others pertaining to love exist without exact answers. 

Eros love is romantic, burning, or passionate love.  It evokes us to write the poems, sing the songs, and direct the movies associated with ‘the love we love most’.  Why is eros love hot, burning, and passionate?  Eros love is sexual in nature, but it is not required in order for eros love to live.  It largely consists of the relationship or attraction shared between two nonrelated love ones.  The poems, songs, and movies attempt to describe the yearning and burning feelings felt between the two lovers that love each other more than words can say.  After experiencing eros love, many may feel that there is no greater love that two people can share, but agape love takes love to its highest plane.

Why is agape love the highest form of love?  It is unconditional.  What does unconditional mean?  Unconditional is defined as not subject to any conditions.  This in turn defines unconditional love as love not subject to any conditions.  Do any of us deserve this type of love?  Are any of us worthy of this type of love?  Are we able to love with agape love?  Many would answer these questions relying on his/her own perspective based upon specific religious, scientific, or social beliefs.  The primary focus should be to strive for agape love and share it with everything we interact with.  A world full of agape love, we would all love to live in so share it, give it, and live it. 

The one thing we can never get enough of is love.  And the one thing we never give enough is love. – Henry Miller 

Types of love

Is romantic love the best and only love we can experience? In order to answer this question, one must understand the different types of love.  Greek language breaks love into four parts: storge, philia, eros, and agape.  Here we will discuss the first two types of love.

The first type of love (storge) is associated with affection similar to the love a parent has for his/her child, or the love expressed between various family members.  Storge love is thought of as a natural type of love which occurs without much effort.  When many think of different family members such as father, mother, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin, niece, or nephew, a natural wam feeling fills them.  Why do we have these feelings for different family members?  Many would answer that they are family, and when we do not have anything else, we have family.  This is a natural response to the question, but it does not provide the answer needed.  The mother and father lye at the heart of the family structure, and together they concieve children.  The storge love bond between parent and child is created because of human beings love for life.  This is the most precious human possession, and it creates the strong bond between parent and child.  The strength of the love changes as the size of the family expands, but the love for family remains consistant because of our love for life.

What type of feeling does philia love bring over someone?  Since philia love is associated with family, the feeling felt is similar to storge.  The difference comes from philia also being affiliated with enjoying an activity or friendship.  This allows love to touch non living things like music, exercise, or learning.  How does philia love make you feel when you are enjoying the activity you love most?  Does time seem to speed up while enjoying these activities?  Does philia love feel stronger than storge love?  Storge and philia love feel similar like our feelings for friends, family, and enjoyable activities.  Philia love is only slightly different because it includes friends and enjoyable activities.  Otherwise, these two types of love are the same. 

Pay attention to how you feel when you experience these two slightly different types of love, and see if you are able to draw a clear line between them. 

Love is that condition in which happiness of another person is essential to your own. -Robert A. Heinlein

How deep is your love?

I love you with all of my heart . . . I love you with all of my soul. . . I love you with all that I am. . . I love you from the bottom of my heart or from the depths of my soul. . . I love you more than words can say.   Many of us have used one of the above phrases to express the amount of love we have for a loved one, or something similar.  Do any of these phrases clearly state the amount of love directed towards the individual?  Can love be measured?  If so what unit of measure would we use?  Does love need to be measured?

Quantifying things is necessary for us to make sense of the world.  For example, how many times a day do we look at a clock for the time of day, how many purchases do we make every day or week with x amount of dollars, and how many people ask what today's date is daily?  Numbers are necessary for everyday life  just as units of measure are such as pounds, ounces, liters, quarts, gallons, kilometers, and miles.

How deep is your love?  Is it as full as a gallon of milk, long as a mile, or heavy as a ton of bricks?  Since love cannot be measured using these units, none of the above question have answers.  Let's see if we can find a measurement of love with the initial statements.  I love you with all of my heart/soul/that I am, and I love you from the depths of my heart/soul.  These statements say our hearts/souls love.  If they love, how much do they love?  How much does a whole heart/soul actually love?  The abstractness of these 'human parts' makes it entirely to difficult to make any sort of measurement since the parts themselves have no unit of measure.  I love you more than words can say.  Although this statement is similar to the others by having no unit of measure, it varies.  What does more than words can say mean?  We do not know exactly, but we begin to get an understanding of the power of love.  Love transends language, thought, and any other human experience we feel.  It needs no unit of measurement because it is to vast to measure.  Do not limit love by trying to measure it, but let it be free by experincing, enjoying, and enriching it.

In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities. - Janos Arany

The love we love most

Why is love between lovers hot, passionate, and/or burning?  Why is this type of love desired above all others?  Why does ‘hot’ love create an emotional tornado inside of us?  You see the love of your life, and your heart starts to race, palms start to sweat, you experience a shortness of breath, and you start to feel a combination of excitement and nervousness.  Why do we have this uncontrollable response?  It is similar to the fight or flight response.  Our lives are not in danger when exposed to love, so why are there similarities between the two unmanageable responses?  Is it because life without love is not worth living at all?    

The fight or flight response helps an animal fight or run for its life.  What does this have to do with love?  We do not have to fight love or run from it.  Do we?  The fight or flight response helps every animal stay alive, and maybe our bodies are trying to tell us how important romantic love is to us through the fight or flight response.  Life is the most important thing we have, and love follows behind as a close second. 

Love is important to everyone, but why does romantic love relate to the fight or flight response?  Warm love involves cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components, but burning love involves the above components along with an erotic component.  No two animals can share anything more personal than their own physical bodies because this is the most significant item they possess, and the byproduct of the union  produces the greatest pleasure know to humans. 

Is it the desire for love or lust which creates a connection between fight or flight response and love?  Which one is more important to you?  Romantic love is most important because it combines the greatest pleasure with the greatest emotion. 

Love is composed of a soul inhabiting two bodies. - Aristotle

Is my love enough?

Do you love you (partially or entirely)?  Once you answer this question, then you can answer whether you love anything else because no one can give what he/she does not have.  After much self analysis, you discover your love of self.  Is this type of love enough?  Do you need love from family, friends, or a personal lover?  The answer will vary from person to person, but what do most people need/require?  Which type of love takes precedence in your life?  Which do you need the most?  Most important is love for yourself since this allows you to love others, but afterwards, having a personal love one takes priority.  This is evident in the multiple cultures around the world using the institution of marriage to try and discover that romantic love.  The high divorce rates seem to show this method may not be the appropriate one, but nevertheless, many continue to marry. 

The desire for a personal lover overshadows the love for family and friends because everyone has this type of love in their lives.  If love for family, friends, or yourself was enough, millions would not marry, hearts would not be broken, and the billions of songs, books, and poetry written about love would not exist since they discuss the hot burning love not the warm love associated with family, friends, or yourself.

Is hot burning love better than warm love?  They are both necessary to help everyone have a wonderful experience with love.  So I ask again, “Is my love enough?”  Yes my love is enough . . . . . our love is enough.

“We were given: Two hands to hold. Two legs to walk.  Two eyes to see.  But why only one heart? Because the other was given to someone else.  For us to find.” –Author Unknown