Love has so many, many, varied descriptions, and states, after all, there is Loving someone or something, being In Love, Puppy Love, Real Love, True Love, Deep Love, False Love, Love You like a Friend, Tough Love, Unconditional Love, and the modern definitions go on and on.

The Greeks defined love in four main ways: ( so sayeth Wiki)

1) Agape love is unconditional love. It is love by "choice" even if you are not pleased. A good example is "God loves us with our faults."

2) Philia love is the dispassionate virtuous love, guided by our likes or our healthy or unhealthy needs and desires.

3) Storge is the word for family love and the physical show of "affection", the need for physical touch. Sometimes the love between exceptional friends.

4) Eros is the physical "sexual" desire, intercourse. It is the root word of erotic, and eroticism.

My own beliefs? Here are a few things I've written about love in the past.

Unconditional love is not so much about how we receive and endure each other, as it is about the deep vow to never, under any condition, stop bringing the flawed truth of who we are to each other.

If you try to understand love, before being held, you will never feel compassion.

When love is deep, float upon it, or dive for the depths.

The center I once glimpsed is all around me,
A landscape I now live in,
And I will not pretend anymore.
If those I love can't recognize me with my soul out in the open,
I will no longer retreat and show what is familiar.

I would be anything for you,
Would you be yourself?

The dream is awakened when thinking I Love You,
And life begins when saying I love you,
And joy moves like blood when embracing someone with love.

Does any of this really define love? I think, I feel, that for each of us it is different, everchanging, and evolving, and very much a process.

But what do I know?

Respectfully,
TS