What is it?

     What is love? Is it even a definable thing? Scientifically, would love be a solid; something that has a set shape and volume? Or would it be a liquid, with a set volume, but no guaranteed shape? Or even perhaps a gas, which has neither defined shape nor volume. If you look at merriam-webster.com, love(noun) has nine definitions, not counting sub-definitions. Counting all sub-definitions, there are sixteen interpretations. As a verb, love has seven more definitions. Assuming we toss out the definitions dealing with tennis, informal address, and fornication, that still leaves fourteen possibilities with both noun and verb combined. Narrowing further, to exclude all definitions that don't include the words affection, like, devotion, cherish, or concern, we end up with nine definitions. Clearly, this path is not very likely to take us anywhere very quickly.

       So let's try another way. Let's reverse engineer a definition of love from what we know about how people use it. We say I love you to one another when we're very closely tied emotionally. So we could say that love is a term for a close, two-way, positive, emotional attachment. On the other hand we say things like I love baseball, or I love swimming. Activities can't have an emotional attachment to us, so let's say we take out the part about two-way. Then we run into problems. We say I love you to our parents, which is fine, and to our siblings, which is also fine. Yet, when we get older we say it to people we find sexually desirable. Now that's an awkward moment for your Facebook status. You just used a word formerly reserved for your parents and siblings on a smokin' hot babe. Freud would be having a field day. So let's make this situation even weirder. Think about being a member of a team. Part of a unit so close that there is absolute trust. Do you tell the other team members that you love them? If you do then love just got a lot more complicated. Now it's not just something you use to describe close emotional attachment, but also the word for sexual attraction and deep trust, not necessarily at the same time. The more scenarios you come up with, the more addendum's and notations you must make to your definition. 

      Ok. We've busted trying to look it up in the dictionary, and we've traumatized ourselves trying to build a definition from common usages. Maybe the answer lies in the etymology, but my bet is we won't find any really helpful clues there. So there's only one thing left to do. Take a shot in the dark...

      So, let me tell you what love is. Love is what happens when you can't live without something. When you're having a nightmare and it isn't your death, but the destruction of what you love, that wakes you up in a cold sweat. It's when you look at a beautiful sunset at the end of a good day and you realize that the day could have been ten times better, if only the thing that you love had been included in it. It's a mother waking up in the middle of the night to check on her child, just because she had a feeling. It's every time an octogenarian couple wake up next to each other in the morning. As the songs say, it's all around, it's higher than a mountain top, it's a roller coaster, it's all you need, it's a many splendored thing, but I think the simplest way to describe it is this... It's a four letter word.