What is love?

[changed]

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds, 
Or bends with the remover to remove: 
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 
It is the star to every wandering bark, 
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken 
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle’s compass come: 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 
   If this be error and upon me proved, 
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

[Maestrophil]

You sid 'in the most romantic fairytales' so that is how I answered.  In the Eternities, I have no idea!  🙂

[Tacenda]

Wish I could have checked more than one.

[changed]

16 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Wish I could have checked more than one.

You can check more then one

[changed]

26 minutes ago, Maestrophil said:

You sid 'in the most romantic fairytales' so that is how I answered.  In the Eternities, I have no idea!  🙂

Shouldn't the eternities match the most beautiful fairytale?

[Tacenda]

6 minutes ago, changed said:

You can check more then one

Oh yeah, it's multiple choice lol! ETA: darn, it won't let me once I voted.  

Edited January 29, 2019 by Tacenda

[Jane_Doe]

None of the above.  

Love is truly caring and giving yourself to another, not thinking about what you get out of it, but just because you love the other person.  

[phaedrus ut]

Baby don't hurt me........

[The Nehor]

I like the Greek divisions of love.

The poem in the OP describes agape. Taking that approach with Eros or Philia is probably madness.

I doubt anyone who says they will be my friend no matter what. I can come up with things I could do that would make it wrong for them to keep being my friend. Same with a romantic love relationship.

Agape, or charity as used in Christianity, is the purest love and can be held for everyone. The other loves are magnified when agape is added to them.

[changed]

Really interesting to see how this poll is turning out - that parent/child love is ahead.  ... but then we're to leave parents and cleave to our spouse sooo... but then if love of spouse is greater than love of children, then God's love for us is the secondary love and the ultimate sacrifice would not be sacrifice of child, but sacrifice of spouse... but then perhaps a spouse was sacrificed when the handmaid Mary became Jesus mom?  

 

Ok - just trying to get the conversation going, would love for more people to vote

Love=sacrifice?  or

Love=seeing face to face, connectedness?  

Edited January 29, 2019 by changed

[Calm]

I think you are inaccurate to label anything automatically "the deepest love".  Any type relationship can be the deepest love for that individual. Some may find deeper love among their friends because they have baggage with family or they just happen to have friends who are willing to be vulnerable with others.  Some may have it with family.  Some may have it in the marriage relationship because of what marriage means to both involved.  I have an ancestor who believed she found the deepest/purest love in the relationships she developed in her polygynous family, she described it as the closest thing to celestial love she thought could be found on earth.

 It is more about the individuals involved than the type of relationship once people are adults, imo.  

[Maidservant]

5 hours ago, changed said:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds, 
Or bends with the remover to remove: 
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 
It is the star to every wandering bark, 
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken 
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle’s compass come: 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 
   If this be error and upon me proved, 
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

This may be, but it is something come to over a lifetime, an eternity.  We can't all do it yet.

4 hours ago, changed said:

Shouldn't the eternities match the most beautiful fairytale?

No.  They haven't so far . . .

[cinepro]

[JLHPROF]

None of the above.

Christ said the greatest love was to lay down your life for your friends.  Joseph taught a man filled with the love of God is anxious to bless all God's children, not just his immediate associates.  God so loved the world he gave his beloved son for all of us.

In other words love is about what you are willing to sacrifice for others, whether spouse, child, or other it doesn't matter.  It's measured in sacrifice.  The minute it becomes about what we want it's no longer love.

Edited January 29, 2019 by JLHPROF

[3DOP]

I am compelled to offer something that I found to be quite profound, and to one who is concerned to "love the Lord they God with all thy heart...etc.", I found it very comforting. I have been re-reading a book by my confirmation saint, Francis de Sales, whose feast is today, else I wouldn't have roused myself to make this very short, I hope, post.

The book is his Treatise on the Love of God. The section I am in now seems to speak much to the question asked in the opening post. He begins by speaking about a mother's love, and how an infant, so needy and tender, so easily raises in the heart of its loving mother a kind of tenderness that she feels for no one else. Does it mean on this account that she loves the child more than her husband, or alas, loves the child more than God? I think it understandable to say yes, because she has never experienced such heightened sensible warmth for God or any creature. St. Francis explains well, what I will try to summarize in a few words and suggests that this mother may well indeed love God and her husband more. Here is how he explains it:

Quote

...though the love of her child was more tender, more pressing and passionate, yet that other (for her husband in a rightly ordered marriage) was the more excellent, stronger, and better. So when a heart loves God in respect of His infinite goodness, with however little a portion of this excellent love, it will prefer God's will before all things, and in all the occasions that present themselves it will forsake everything, to preserve itself in grace with the sovereign goodness, and nothing whatever will divert it from this. So that, though this divine love does not always so sensibly affect and melt the heart as do the other loves; yet on occasions, it performs acts so noble and excellent, that one of them only is better than ten millions of others. 

----from Book 8, Loving God Above All Things, ch. 7, Treatise on the Love of God, p. 429, TAN Books and Publishers, (1997)

I love that our good God is not jealous over our feelings toward our fellow creatures. I know myself that if love consists in feelings, that I fail miserably to love God above all things. On other hand, if I am willing because of a love for God that isn't always felt as much as other loves, I do things that I do not want to do, and if for this love for God, I refuse to do things that I want to do, then the love of God dwells in my soul. If I deny myself for God like I would for no creature, whether in the absence or the presence of passionate feelings, I needn't worry if I often happen to feel more love for my wife, my children, the grandchildren, or even the kitty cat!

For what it is worth, a Catholic perspective on the Feast of a Doctor of the Catholic Church, whose special subject was love.

Rory 

 

[Calm]

8 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

None of the above.

Christ said the greatest love was to lay down your life for your friends.  Joseph taught a man filled with the love of God is anxious to bless all God's children, not just his immediate associates.  God so loved the world he gave his beloved son for all of us.

In other words love is about what you are willing to sacrifice for others, whether spouse, child, or other it doesn't matter.  It's measured in sacrifice.  The minute it becomes about what we want it's no longer love.

I think that applies to charitable love, agape.  English uses the term "love" for many experiences though, many that are about the giving and taking in the relationship.

Edited January 29, 2019 by Calm

[changed]

5 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

None of the above.

Christ said the greatest love was to lay down your life for your friends.  Joseph taught a man filled with the love of God is anxious to bless all God's children, not just his immediate associates.  God so loved the world he gave his beloved son for all of us.

In other words love is about what you are willing to sacrifice for others, whether spouse, child, or other it doesn't matter.  It's measured in sacrifice.  The minute it becomes about what we want it's no longer love.

Namaste JLHProf, Namaste...

I think sacrifice is an outward manifestation of love, but is not love itself. Does sacrifice allow deeper understanding?  In some cases, but not all.   Jesus felt our pain - that feels like love - vulnerability is a gateway to love very much I think.

[Maestrophil]

6 hours ago, changed said:

Shouldn't the eternities match the most beautiful fairytale?

I doubt it - I think that is what gets so many people flummoxed about spiritual matters - we try and make them fit our Earthly expectations.  I am pretty sure they will be dramatically different in ways we don't know or comprehend

[JLHPROF]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I think that applies to charitable love, agape.  English uses the term "love" for many experiences though, many that are about the giving and taking in the relationship.

Actually I think it applies to divine love.  Shouldn't we always look at the highest expression of love in such a discussion?

[Calm]

On 1/29/2019 at 4:43 PM, JLHPROF said:

Actually I think it applies to divine love.  Shouldn't we always look at the highest expression of love in such a discussion?

"Highest" assumes there is a best type of love rather than a variety of loves each appropriate to the various relationships they involve.  Imo, The highest love is one that takes all relevant forms of love in that relationship and each is not only the best they can be, but they support the other forms of love present improving the relationship.

Thus the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Edited January 31, 2019 by Calm

[JLHPROF]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

"Highest" assumes there is a best type of love rather than a variety of loves each appropriate to the various relationships they involve.  Imo, The highest love is one that takes all relevant forms of love in that relationship and each is not only the best they can be, but they support the other forms of love present improving the,

Thus the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

So you view Divine love and romantic love as two different things, each having their own highest form, but not necessarily one above the other.

Not sure if I agree or not.  Have to think about that for a bit.

[katherine the great]

4 hours ago, changed said:

Really interesting to see how this poll is turning out - that parent/child love is ahead.  ... but then we're to leave parents and cleave to our spouse sooo... but then if love of spouse is greater than love of children, then God's love for us is the secondary love and the ultimate sacrifice would not be sacrifice of child, but sacrifice of spouse...

I've thought a lot about this throughout my life. I remember my mom telling me that she loved my dad more than she loved her children (because she thought that this was the "proper order of things"). I thought it a little strange but didn't think too much about it until I had children and then I thought it was the weirdest thing she ever said to me. My children were BY FAR the most important people in my life and in the very unlikely situation that I had to choose between my children and my husband I would choose my children hands down. Ironically, my mom's marriage ended and mine is still going strong. Now that the children are grown and more independent, I can devote more time to loving my husband and I appreciate him more as well. Perhaps this is why were are supposed to love God first. Maybe in doing so, God can guide us to loving in the most effective way. Although our capacity to love may be infinite, we are constrained by the amount of energy we have to love others.

[Hamba Tuhan]

I think we're supposed to love everyone as God Himself does. This is the goal if not the current reality.

[The Nehor]

On 1/29/2019 at 11:01 AM, changed said:

Shouldn't the eternities match the most beautiful fairytale?

No, it should exceed them.

[Calm]

Fairytales appear to be relatively boring after the evil is destroyed.

Women's sole purpose is to care for a man or his children in the vast majority of them.  Many of them don't even present the women as having a choice in whether or not they love the man who seeks them out.  It is all love at first sight...love based purely on appearance (beauty) or position (king or king's daughter).

In many the woman shows her ultimate goodness by suffering in silence.

And let's not forget the mostly gruesome fates for those who disagreed with the heros.  And everyone else gets to serve the power couple.

Edited January 31, 2019 by Calm