L-O-V-E

While reading the assigned “I believe” statements for our homework last class, a specific quote from the work “I Agree with a Pagan” by Arnold Toynbee, really stood out to me, “Love is what gives life meaning and purpose.” This quote then got me thinking, how could one come right out and state so exactly what gives our lives meaning. It was almost as if he had no doubt at all. He mentions that this is also the basis of the Bible and in God’s teachings. Which I can quite positively agree with.
I then moved to question whether or not love is the sole purpose of life. I then started to realize that love is everywhere. When one first uses the word love, I first jump to think, true love, passionate love, the love you feel between you and the person that is meant for you. However, that is just one of several types of love. There is then the love that you feel towards you family and the love you feel towards your friends. Another different type of love is the love we feel towards something we are a part of, such as our country and school.
Then love can even move on to mean, the way we feel for a certain tv show, or sports team. Love is really everywhere. It is more in our lives than I realized until questioning. So I can most definitely agree with the quote from Toynbee, love really is the meaning of our lives. We go through so many different ways of showing and expressing it. I am sure anyone who has had their heart broken knows what it feels like to lose love. Some say that the heart break feeling is one of the worst feelings we can even experience. For me this has definitely been true. I have not experienced anything more painful then that of a heart break. This coming from a girl who has had 6 surgeries, and taken a line drive shot to the face.
So this leads me to my next point, for me the word “love” is not simply something I throw out there or take with a grain of salt. I treat the word love like I do the word hate, I only use them when I actually mean them. Once again this coming from experience, I have had both of those words used towards me when someone did not mean either of them. The pain of finding out someone used the word love when they did not mean it hurt just as much when they said the word hate and I took it as how they truly felt.
Due to this I make sure I do not use either of the words if I do not truly mean them. I would not want to put anyone through either of those pains. However back to what I mentioned earlier with the different ways the word love can be used, it is fine to tell your friend you love them, because they know you are not telling them you love them romantically. Even still with this type of love I still try to make sure I use it only when I mean it.
All this thinking about love reminds me of the song “What is Love?” when I am singing along to the song I am not thinking of the meaning. But when I sit back and think about it, this is what comes to mind. If someone were ever to ask me what I thought love was I would tell them most simply it’s a feeling. To me the complexity of love is way too much to sum up in a few sentences. Love is defined in several ways, it depends on which “love” you’re talking about.
For me friendship love is simply caring about that person. However romantic love is when you make yourself second to that person, when you think of them first and yourself secondly. Well at least that is what I have come to find. These are just two of many different types of love, and so I am sure you can see how that might take more than a couple sentences. How could just a small, four letter word, have so much meaning and complexity behind it? I think the answer lies in the quote above, it is because “love is what gives life meaning and purpose.” Because if you really think about it, what would the world, or our lives be like without it? Yes, love brings us heart break, but for me I would endure years and years of heart break as long as I got to have at least one day which was completely full of love.
Love is a crazy feeling, because when you do truly love someone you do not hold grudges, and no matter how badly you fight with that person it does not matter because at the end of the day you love them and you will do anything for them, including giving your heart to them and letting them break it. Love is the sole purpose of life and I would not want to leave this world without saying that I loved and I was loved back.

In the 10th grade I had to memorize a sonnet, and I believe it goes very well with what I am talking about.

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 wand'ring 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.

William Shakespeare; Sonnet 116