Pensive Power

“Love is many a splendid thing… Love… Lift us where we belong… all you need is Love!”

These are the words of poet/writer Christian in Moulin Rouge and it just comes to show what this word love… it is impossible to define and it, like many emotions, even though it can be described in full detail. Love is different for everyone, it changes from time to time and it changes in every different occasion.

Love has been described as “magic” that comes between people that joins them together that makes everyone work together. It is the social “glue” that philosophers dream about. It is the very thing that endeavours scientists to keep proving things right, or wrong, even if that thing is love itself. However, it seems as though love cannot be defined, it is unknowable. So that is the issue: what is love? And how do you define such an emotion… or any emotion for that matter?

Love can be defined from its responses… what happens if we experience love… but what goes on inside changes from person to person. Or, it may stay the same but no human language can help us to possibly understand it… or translate to each other until that person feels it. This is nearly the same as all emotions - no way can we possibly use language to possibly discern emotions.

An analogy that can be used to describe emotion is colours. Emotions are like colour in every way possible – there are millions of them, they can be mixed and they seem to be the categorised just like colours.

One, there a millions and millions of emotions… some that we cannot not discern between them until we place them next to each other. Our perception of them is only limited to what can be sensed, the quickening pulse, the nerves, the “butterflies in the stomach”. Human sight can possibly only perceive between 256x256x256 colours, or, in nontechnical terms, 16,777,216 colours. This appears to be an amazing number but, compared to emotions, it could be well a very small numbers. This is because there is not only sight that can perceive emotions, but a whole myriad of sensors and neural receptors that can “feel”. Sure, it may be true that one does not have to experience all these emotions, but it is possible that the body is capable of doing all these emotions. There may be an unknown amount of emotions and love is probably a whole group.

Two, emotions can be mixed… which could explain the millions of emotions that one can possibly have. Emotions can be played around with, mixed around like an artist mixing paints on a canvas. There is no shortage of the myriads of combinations that can be made by mixing the colours of emotions. Love could be straight one colour, it could be mixed with joy, lust, hate or anguish… or there could be combinations of many, many things. The human language is simply too small, too young to possibly take down the millions of emotions because they are mixed. Emotions are sometimes reported as “mixed”. However, most of the times emotions are mixed, they are remnants of many emotions impacting on one person.

Third, emotions are categorised, just like colours. Since we cannot possibly name each and every one of our emotions, we simply place it into categories. There is no such thing as a happy emotion, or feeling, they are just categories, in which joy, excitement and others fit into. Love is the same… but love is the most complicated category (of course, there are no real lines). Love can be joined to harsh things, to kind things, to hate even. The phrase love-hate relationship comes to mind and it is true – sometimes love can be joined to hate to make that emotion.

A Poem about Love

Someone asked me what is love
is it good, is it bad
is it awesome, is it terrible
I honestly didnt know how to answer them.
I finally desided love is the most complicated of all emotions
Love is kind
love is harsh
love is wonderful
love is terrible
love is a cure
love is a sickness
love is LOVE
love is hate
love is meaningful
love is pointless
love shows the best in people
love shows the worse in people
love makes us speak truth
love makes us lie
love understands everything
love confuses everyone
love builds your life
love tears your heart down
love makes you smile
love makes you cry
love makes us cuddle
love makes us hit
love makes the world go round
love makes the world go crashing down
love makes things simple
love makes things impossible
love is always worth it
love is never worth it
love makes us smarter
love makes us stupid
love is enlightening!
love is BLIND
make love not war
make war out of love
love encourages
love scares
love is peaceful
love creates fights
love is soothing
love is tough

…and above all
Love is always worth it
because you become a better person
everytime you love someone
from the simplest careing for a friend
to the deepest desire to love someone til the world ends
from the unconditional love of a child
to the complicated love of the gods
there is…no meaning to love
love means…everything

No matter how much it hurts you, or makes you cry
tries your spirit, and splits your soul.
Love is always worth it…because what doesn’t kill you
makes you stronger
And however long it takes
you will be, a better person because you lived, though love.
Weren’t afraid to make mistakes, choices and try again.
And…above all, loved someone no matter what people thought.
You would die for that person…but you would also live for them.
That…is the true meaning of love…