What is love?

Apr 03, 2008 - 07:59 AM PST

What is love? I think it is one of the questions that has been asked, in many different ways, since the beginning of time. I really don't know what it is. Is it when you care about someone or something a lot? Or is it a type of selfless devotion? All I know is that I've seen many different kinds of love. Take my grandparents, for example. They have been married 50 years this year. They were married when my grandma was 16 and my grandfather was 17. Is what they have love? I don't know if it was love that made them get married, but it's hard to say if love is what has kept them married. My grandfather hasn't been the nicest to my grandma over the years, but she stays by his side. In their mid-life years he had an affair, and now, after his stroke, he bosses her around and talks down to her. Yet, this morning I saw something that made me wonder about their love. My mom was getting into our CR-V to drive my grandparents to the store, and my grandparents were waiting for her to unlock the rest of the doors. When the doors were unlocked, my grandfather let my grandma sit in the front, while he squashed himself in the back. I started to wonder if this was out of love or common courtesy...? It's hard to say. You would think that it must have been out of love, since they've been married 50 years, but at the same time it could have been common courtesy that has developed out of habit.

Love is not an easy thing to understand; there are a lot of small subtleties that come into play when trying to understand it. These subtleties change from couple to couple or to whatever is being loved. The only thing that remains constant IS love, which brings us back to the question: what is love? I guess the point of love is to only know it once you've felt it, and never truly understand it your whole life.