According to the dictionary, love is "an intense feeling of deep affection", but it means something different to different people. Its definition varies from person to person. To get various perspectives on love, I asked some people around me to define love. They all had something beautiful to say about it. I will start with myself.
“I Was A Hopeless Romantic”
It is true that defining love is difficult. It is a beautiful feeling. I was fortunate enough to experience it. It is also true that love makes us all cheesy. It makes us write poems and long essays describing our feelings, when we struggled to write even one paragraph in our school essays.
I wrote so many pages expressing my feelings. When I read them now, it makes me cringe. I was a hopeless romantic, mostly because of all the romantic novels I read as a teenager. Small gestures made me happy.
I have been single for three years now, but I still remember how I used to feel when I was with the love of my life. I will always remember all the moments I had with him, the happy ones and the sad ones… All the fights and making up, all the songs he sang for me, the way he looked at me. These memories define love for me.
Love is enjoying each other’s company even in silence. Love is speaking to each through your eyes, because words are just not enough, sometimes.
Yes, unreciprocated love is also interesting. You would be living in another reality if your crush felt human, and if you didn’t get hurt as your expectations were met.
On the other hand, I also feel it’s unfair to expect from one’s partners, because that will be a pressure and love is supposed to be free. It is nobody’s responsibility to make the other person happy.
These days, monogamy is as rare as a hen’s teeth. I wonder what made the generation before us stay in relationships forever. I think it’s mostly compromise. I am not denying that there is selfless love out there, who are there for each other and treat each other equally.
I believe that of late, relationships don’t work because each of us care about our dignity and self respect more than love, which I agree with. It is said that you can’t love another person if you hate yourself.
Usually, loving another person more than yourself leads to a toxic relationship. I don’t think that is love. Love is unconventional. It has its own ways.
“My Love Is The Selfless Kind”
Santhi: For me, love is selfless. I know that self love is the best love, but according to me, there is nothing better than loving someone more than we love ourselves.
This love remains unchanged for one’s mother, daughter, sister, brother, pets, or a partner. Love is a very powerful feeling. Love can’tbe pretentious.
One needn’t necessarily express their feelings or show their love in a particular way. It can be seen through various forms and manners. It makes me forget everything else because my way of love is extreme and intense.
Yes, I have had a few failures, but still, I am not the one who will ever give up on love. As I said before, I still get love from other people if not a partner, such as my family, so it is a never ending feeling, but it is becoming a very rare feeling these days.
“Love For Me Is Growing Old Together”
Mrunali: Love for me means being free. I can be myself around that person. I am free to do whatever I want. He can be the wind beneath my wings and vice versa. Love should not be formal.
I shouldn’t have to think before saying anything to him or calling him at anytime, anywhere, and the same goes for him.
We can even be silent together, just sipping on our coffees in the balcony, and enjoying the evening sky. Love for me is more than sex. It is the togetherness that matter. We should be the best of friends, more than anything else.
A filmy love is what allures me: candle lit dinners, flowers, chocolates, long drives, going on long walks holding on to each other’s hands. This will sound cheesy, but I want him to celebrate all the seven days of Valentine’s week with me, at least once, in all the years that we remain together.
He shouldn’t hold me back from doing anything. He should not tell me what to eat or what not to eat, what to wear or what not to wear. That will be suffocating!
Relationships should be transparent. There should be nothing which we cannot talk to each other about. There should not be any obligation to be together. The reason has to be love. If he wants to be with someone else, he can speak to me about it. I will never hold him back.
Fights are fine, we can deal with it together. Even if the fights create some distance between us for a while, we will eventually come back together stronger.
He need not be perfect, but he can be mine. He can be there for me. We can share our good and bad days together. If one of us is having a good day and the other a bad day, we will talk about the bad day.
Whatever it is that upsets either one of us, we can talk about it. Love for me is growing old together.
“Love Means Being Able To Be Yourself”
Mansi: Love for me is being carefree yet conscious. It is about being my craziest self without having a second thought about being judged or questioned.
Love is when you know there’s someone who wants to hear your story when you get back home. Love is when you are free to discuss and debate.
Love is also about compromises and sacrifices, without making a big deal about it. Love is when you know you will be called upon for your mistakes, but you know together you will figure things out.
I also feel that love is not just restricted to a romantic relationship. You can feel this with every single person you love. I mean when I think of my love for my papa, I feel everything that I spoke to him about, reflected the love we shared.
“I Can See That Love Has Changed With Times”
Sarika: Love is a mix of a lot of feelings. Love is caring deeply about someone and also about being cared for. Love is being kind and generous. Love is a feeling, a bond, and a connection.
Like everything else, love has also evolved with time. These days, it is glorified in movies and television shows into something it’s not. Love is a bond between friends, partners, children and parents, siblings etc.
Love is very powerful and that’s probably why we have painful heartbreaks, upon losing a loved one. But, the most important kind of love is self-love. If we love ourselves we find it easier to love others as well. Love is not just romantic.
Humans are social animals so we have been making connections, finding mates and building families, since eternity. I believe that love is not completely man made, but the meaning of love has changed over the centuries.
Love is a lot of things. And, we still find it hard to define it. Even scientists can’t fully explain what love is. But, love has become so important in human life. Literature, poems, songs, films, art: they all speak of love and also make us feel love.
“Love Is About Attachment And Intimacy”
I asked everyone, but more women responded than men. Vipin was one of the few men who opened up to me on his ideas of love.
Vipin: Love is an emotion for me. It starts when someone takes space in your mind and heart together. It is attachment, caring, intimacy, all three feelings together.
Any one of these by themselves is not love. It also includes commitment, trust and affection… Protectiveness even. If you love someone deeply, it never fades away.
Whether the other person values you or has the same feeling towards you, doesn’t matter. It also consists of fights and a great deal of irritating each other, but you still crave to be with each other.
