Nothing is more simple and more terrifing than to write the word "love", word that lives in us and beyond us in a primordial and pure unity, word that means death and life together, eternity and nothingness, total sincerity, absolute abnegation, a word that is a way to Heaven or Hell.
Word indefinite, but however a word that can be defined, a synthesis of some terrible contrasts like "Fiery frost and freezed fire", love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Love is the centre of the Univers. All things gravitate arround it, all our acts, our feelings are influenced by the power of love.
More words have not been written about any other aspect of our being. No topic is more misunderstood. Search for your answers amongst these prose and perhaps you will discover what has eluded all before you: "For it is the intrigue of love that drives us forever forward, giving us our reason for being. Love give us life, and for the blessed many, life gives them love."(Anonymous)
A human being conceives different types of love: for family, for friends (a strong feeling of caring about someone, especially a member of your family or a close friend), for God, for ourselves, for nature, for animals, for certain objects, but, in fact, when we first hear the word "love", we think of the romantic meaning: a strong feeling of liking and caring about someone, especially combined with sexual attraction.
Does true love exist? a relative question for our mind and especially for our soul. "Nothing human is good enough to be loved, but every decent human being has some capacity for loving".
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.' ( I Corinthians 13:4-8a (NIV)).
Love is best seen as devotion and action, not an emotion. Love is not exclusively based on how we feel. Certainly our emotions are involved, but they cannot be our only criteria for love. True devotion will always lead to action - true love.
We can only identify true love and know when we have found it, based on the Word of God. When we match our relationships up to what the Bible says that love is -
and we are honestly prepared to make a life-long commitment to that person -- then we can say that we are truly 'in love.' The three keys to that statement are:
We have to
1) look at the Word of God
2) be completely honest with ourselves
3) understand the level of commitment
that comes with true love.
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Love has introduced in the middle of the Bible the most divine and heathen singing of the beloved person;love. word that gave birth to the song of Tristan and Isolda, united in death by the same tragical shiver, the heart-bracking of Francesca da Rimini, the deep madness of Don Quijote, the sublimity of Ofelia, the spasm of Heathcliff, the painful inconstancy of Manfred, the sadness and the fly of Eminescu's Luceafar; word that rise the human from the deepest sleep of the matter, that projects the steps to the absolute horizon.
A man who knows what true love means, accepts that all is made up of good and evil. He has the satisfaction of the most perfect love, but at the same time, he is exposed to sacrificing himself to mentain it: "If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificied ".
Writers have defined love in different ways. E.B.Browning, a great Victorian poet, said:
"
expressing his true and eternal love:
"Do you know, when you have told me to think of you, I have been feeling ashamed of thinking of you so much, of thinking of only you--which is too much, perhaps. Shall I tell you? It seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to any woman what you are to me--the fulness must be in proportion, you know, to the vacancyand only I know what was behind--the long wilderness without the blossoming roseand the capacity for happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve--not you--but my own fate?
Was ever any one taken suddenly from a lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do? And you love me more, you say?--Shall I thank you or God? Both,--indeed--and there is no possible return from me to either of you! I thank you as the unworthy may.. and as we all thank God. How shall I ever prove what my heart is to you? How will you ever see it as I feel it? I ask myself in vain. Have so much faith in me, my only beloved, as to use me simply for your own advantage and happiness, and to your own ends without a thought of any others--that is all I could ask you without any disquiet as to the granting of it--May God bless you! -- Your B.A."
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Another concludent way of expressing true love is through the point of view of Honore de Balzac:
"To love means stop living for yourself, make all human feelings: fear, hope, pain, joy, pleasure, depend of only one person; it means plunging into Infinite, giving your life to one person in such a way that you can only live and think to make her happy."
"To find relief in painful tears, pleasure in sufference and sufference in pleasure, that is to bring together all the contradictions."
"Love is not art or science: it is an instinct of the soul."
True love only exists for those who belive in it, who know how to appreciate it, how to prove it and how to make it grow.
We can tell a a lot about love, but with all things known by the human mind we will never be able to decipher the real meaning of the word "love".
adored wife in 1846, January 10, a way of
