What Is Love?:

What is love? Well, better minds than mine have wrestled with that thorny problem for as long as humankind has existed. And I think that no one had come to any real conclusion as yet. Religious, philosophers, artists; all the big question-solvers have tried. So, if they have not worked it out, what chance to the rest of us have? Love is kind, but can be stern; love is gentle, but can be fierce and even violent; love is calm, but can be as hot as passion; love is caring for someone so much that you would give up your own life for them, but it can also be the reason why you withhold something from the one you love. I suspect that we will never discover what it is, exactly. That there are as many definitions of love as there people who have lived and will live.

I have very little experience of this, whatever love is. I grew up with parents who were unable to express love and for whom it was even something that no "decent" person ever spoke of. To this day, I have no idea if my parents have ever loved me, or not. Yet I am certain that my own daughter does love me and I, her. Simply because neither of us are afraid to say so. Parental love is an odd thing. You give birth to a baby, after nine months of backache, sickness, sciatica, and all sorts of other ailments. Not to mention labour itself, which is a whole other experience. And at the end of it all, when it is all over, a tiny, helpless baby is placed in your arms and you are asked to love and care for this little thing for the rest of your life. It is a terrible burden to lay on a new parent, love. Something else takes over for a while: call it instinct, survival of the species. There is no time for love; it's all you can do to stay awake half the time as your whole life is turned upside down. Even if the baby was wanted and planned for, it is still a terrible shock.

I will admit, I found it hard to love my baby. I had post natal depression in the worst way as well as health problems. I got by on instinct, fear of what would happen if I admitted that I did not love this small creature; that I loved my cats more. It took time to get to know her and to find out that, yes, I did love her after all. After all, a baby is not a carbon copy of it's mother and father. It is a person with it's own character and it is a stranger, for all it has been growing inside one for nine months. As my daughter grew up there were fresh challenges to face. But I know I did love her, through all those years, and still do. I always will.

So much for parental love. What about romantic love? Ah yes, that thing that makes the world go round. Growing up, I had little to do with boys, until I got to the double figure years. Then one or two boys professed to be attracted to me, which was fun, but also the cause of great humiliation and sadness. Children are quick to pounce on anyone who feels an emotion that is not experienced by all the group. Being one of the first to be kissed by a boy made me the brunt of teasing: and I was only 10 at the time! One learns to withdraw back into the pack and put aside any finer feelings one may have for the opposite gender. (Or even one's own gender, if one is that way inclined.)

Being a somewhat timid child, I never really recovered from that first experience. I became even more shy and while my friends grew up and paired off with boys after all, I was left, "on the shelf" as the saying goes. Moving into high school made it worse. Of course, I had crushes on boys, as we all do. But being bullied everyday and withdrawing into what would later become clinical depression, made it difficult for any boy to show that he was interested in me. One boy was, but was scared off by the pack who had made me their scapegoat. I left high school as lonely and unwanted as ever, drifted through tech college ditto. Until I turned 19 and went to university.

I dropped out of university after the first year, but I did come away with one thing: a boyfriend! My first and only love. That was 1980 and I met a handsome, sweet boy of 18 at a science fiction convention. We began dating and fell in love so quickly and easily, it was if we had known each other all our lives. After a year we were living together; two years after that, we got married. Twenty seven years later and we are still together, despite the difficulties, despite almost drifting so far apart that we very nearly broke up. Twenty five years later and I still get butterflies in my stomach when he comes home.

So, what is it like, this 35 year old love? We still have passion and romance. We care about each other's wounds and are each other's most fervent partisan. More often than not, we know what each other is thinking and can speak to each other with a look. I hope that we do go into old age, still together. I cannot think of anyone else I would want to share my life with, but my first and only love. If there is anything in reincarnation, perhaps the reason why we fell in love so easily and felt as though we knew each other already, was because we had been together before, in a previous life. If so, then we will meet again, in another. I find that comforting. That the love we have for each other has endured more than one lifetime and will go on and on.

What is love, then? A safe harbour at the end of a stormy day. A shoulder to cry on, when life gets you down. And being those things in return, when the one you love needs you. In the end, it's something we cannot do without; as important as breathing and sweeter than life itself. But that's just my opinion.