brandon

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

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What is love really? I was quite stunned by the question when someone asked me that. And I thought it is like such a dumb question. Even a baby knows what love is. I wanted to answer then I realized. I do not know the answer! At least not right away, I am the dumb one I guess. The dictionary defines love as a form of emotional attachment. Some people will define love as a form of giving. Some regard it as a sacrifice.

What is love to me? Firstly love is unique. It defeats reason and knows no logic. The only law it knows is being unpredictable, it can comes in all form, all shapes and sizes.

Secondly, love is a little selfish in nature. Yes, all. Most will beg to differ, I cannot blame you. I am a weirdo. No matter how selfless the act of love is, it is selfish. It satisfies your needs or wants.

Lastly, love is something that makes the subject complete. Sounds weird you must be thinking. Imagine when one says 'I love someone or something', in some manner it makes him or her complete. I love freedom, I love to dream, I love to travel, I love to be happy and I love you, because all these makes me complete.

But being complete is not necessary all about benefits. To gain something, one has to give. Maybe one has to give more than one receive or vice versa, but a price will need to be paid. Why the rose is a symbol of love? To me it is most appropriate, because underneath the blazing red passion is thorns, and one will be prickled, just how bad it will be.

Hate not that roses has thorns, love that thorns have roses.


In some things, the start can be the end. Right?

1 LOVevol 1

wing

on 07 may 2006, from wing's blog here.
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Yes, I do believe there is love.

I'm talking about it in a very general sense.

Love exist in all kinds, but with love comes hate. Hate blinds you, covering up love. When hate fades away, it's like seeing sunshine after the rain, and love appears, in a more concrete sense. Love cynics, covered with hatred with love.

No doubt, love happens for the sake of curing loneliness, security, sex and more pratically, fulfilling how the society functions- reproduction of life. But we are all part of it and it's how nature works anyway. Assuming we are all God's creation then, HE could have made us without casting the 'feeling of love' to us. Voided, all of us are unable to love or be loved. But, we are given the ability to love, to feel for others. Additional feelings of pain, jealousy, envy, lust, care, concern etc. comes together with this single syllable word and well, making it even more complex to comprehend. (That's what this is for right? haha)

Great sacrifices and things happen, because of love. Shakesphere's Romeo and Juliet died for each other. Be it myths or fables, they all revolve around the one feeling- love.
In our modern era, how many dramas, music and movies revolve around love? In a commercialised sense, we see that love sells. It appeals to us. As much as some might hate to admit, dont we all wish that the lil perfect love story could happen to us?
But yes, perhaps love is too much commercialised, resulting in the doubts and distrust in it. It becomes too cliche and fluffy.
Nobody pursues the perfect love now, cause how do you even define perfect?

Regarding love, the scale's just too wide. I'll just point out 2 of it.
"Self-less love"- there is no more 'myself'. Something little people can achieve, especially in a realistic society.
"Compromising love"- caring enough, seeking comfort and enjoying the company of each other. I think that's good enough.

I do believe that we are all born to love. Even the coldest creature must have experienced some sort of love for hatred to surface, the point is, he/she HAS loved before.

Love exists in places where you cant guess where it would be.
It's there...but you haven't uncover it.
Your heart pumps to give you life, the life to love and be loved as well.
I guess you have to get your heart to believe in it to see it coming in the first place then.

weixin

from an msn conversation, a one-liner at 2.30am.

"there's no such thing as true love."

wei xin says:
i think true love is like the absolute zero in physics
it exists theoretically but never practical
that's why only the bible can give such an accurate account of love
cos its intangible, its being sanctified

scott

from scott, on 06 may 2006.
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Love is a feeling to an arbitrary person. I am sure we have all encountered "I love this person the most!" that is until you've met the next person, which you then declare loudly that "I love you the most!" But of course it could be true, there could indeed be a person that we loved the most, but until you die, you can never ascertain that for sure.

Love is not tangible, it is not measurable. It is an inexplicable feeling, that at the end of the day, we can only judge by time. Time is equal. 24 hours a day. Not a single person has more, not a single has less. If one is willing to spend time with the person, rather obviously, they feel comfortable with you. The more time spent with the person, means less time for other activities and/or people.

If we spend more time with our family rather than our friends, we cherish our family more, if we spend more time with our partners, we cherish them more than anything.

Love is about sharing and sacrifice. Its about sharing a part of your life with the other person. What is your day like, what are your goals in life, the small talks. Its about communication and bridging two otherwise unrelated individuals. Its about sacrificing time, amongst other things. The action of giving.

However, love is also a need. A need to have someone, because no man is an island. Put it in another way, we all have to have someone around. To run home to at the end of the day, to talk about nothing at all, to have great sex with every day (ok every other day), to engage in activities together that cannot be done with friends. Because friends are not for these.

We can be cynical and leave it at that. But to pursue it deeper, we don't exactly 'love' everyone. We can't engage in the aforementioned activities with Tom Dick or Harry (of Ruth Beth and Nancy if you will; and swing the other way), which is why there are breakups. Not those in the spite of anger breakups but the, "hey, lets just let it go", "alright".

Because hate is not the opposite of love, indifference is.

There is that someone whom we connect to, whom despite everything will still stand like a pillar waiting. The pillar we all hang on to tightly, despite always talking about letting go, because we are the ones who can never let go. The someone who will do the most silly things for you, who will wait indefinitely for you. The someone whom you always accuse of not understanding you, but deep inside you know that he/she really does understand you so much better than you'd admit.

Love is such.

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zq

from zq's blog, 06 may 2006, here.
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I am replying a meme from Alexis . What is love, really? For the past few weeks, I have been reading Shakespearean, Singaporean and victorian literature etc, and I realise that literature almost never occurs without some love.

I will try to define what love is.. At least to me, love is when you find yourself genuinely caring for someone else's welfare, worrying about whether the person is sleeping enough etc, but at the same time, you do not have to tell the person you love him/her. Friendship and kinship is love to me and it is ridiculous to limit "love" to an emotion you feel when in a relationship.

I am definitely a cynic when it comes to dealing with the 'love' in a relationship. The three words "I love you" one expects to hear when in a relationship. Shit, he doesn't love me anymore, he hasn't said the three words to me for two days! You are tired, and all you want to do is to sleep, you still care and love the other party, but there, you feel this responsiblity to say "I love you, dear" if not you would feel bad. Yes, I can't deny that it is a nice warm fuzzy feeling the first time you hear those three words, but when repeated too many times, they start to lose meaning, relegated to a chant. The term "love" has now taken on a new dimension for it is now a commitment--I thought you loved me, if you love me, you would listen to me! And when it comes to the crunch, it is not love anymore. It is a binding contract.

Which is why even though sometimes the need for companionship is there, I doubt that I can live with the emotional binds involved and the fatigue that comes with it. After the honeymoon period, yes we all know that it never lasts that long, and when things settle down, that is when the shit hits the fan. The fan which works overtime, and spins the shit everywhere. How come you aren't spending time with me? Don't you love me anymore? Oh gosh, give me my independence please, and my personal space. Perhaps I am just too self-centred to love anyone else consciously.

Sounds contradictory doesn't it? But if you think about it, the love you feel towards friends and family is an unconscious one. Such as calling home to ask if you have to buy dinner back, or just messaging a friend after reading her blog to see if she is alright. You do not have to expressly say "I LOVE YOU", neither does your friend or family expect you to do that. But in a relationship, you have to consciously make an effort, to force yourself to love the other party consciously. Which is really tiring, I feel.

"In the range of human experiences, the one that truly mattered had the narrowest of vocabularies; the emotions that were most deeply and individually felt found expression through the quotation of other people's cliches" (Behind the Moon.)

Is there any purpose in deriving a specific meaning behind such a cliche word as 'love' in the first place, when we all know it IS a cliche? Since when can feelings be defined in words? Isn't this, once again, a simplification of matters?

seraphina

from sera's blog, 05 may 2006, here.
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according to the oxford dictionary:

love (n)
1. A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.

2. A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance.

3. Sexual passion. Sexual intercourse. A love affair.

love...lust...how then would you know the difference...

on the surface, the answer to the question seems glaringly simple.
instinctively, as human beings. we all yearn for love.
for that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you are together, the way you light up at the sound of the persons voice and the fire of joy that burns within you.
the care, the constant attention..of knowing that someone out there is thinking about you.

but really, is there all there is to it?

at sunday school, i learnt, that god is love. that jesus is love.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud./It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs./Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth./It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres./Love never fails.
1cor 13:4-8

not that i am trying to be holy, but to me, this is what love is. difficult as it may seem to live up to all the expectations, it encompasses all that i can ask for and all that i could give.

love has become superficial and merely a physical attraction. all we remember are the happy moments in pictures. but we forget the pain and tears and work that takes us from one smile to the next. now love lasts for as long as there is laughter and we blame its absence for our tears. thats not love. its infatuation that has deluded you into believing that you are in love.

i say love is there through both the sun and rain, and its presence never stronger than when we feel that its gone. we are simply so caught up in ourselves and the pain and sorrow that we are just looking at the door that has closed and ignoring the glaring light that is shining in from that open window.

holding on..hoping and believing even when everything seems impossible- thats what love is.
to trust even though everyone has turned away, cowering in fear- thats what love is.
to give of all of yourself...all that you have and still be willing to offer more. never once expecting anything in return- thats what love is.

we always say that love is not enough.
it is.
as long as you first understand the meaning of pain, scarifice, compromise and understanding.
i dont deny that love is a beautiful thing.
but even the most gorgeous of paintings took years of hard struggle to reach completion and perfection.

rach

on 02 may, 2006 from rachel ang's blog here.
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So, what is love, love is a deep tender ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, OR, a feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance, OR, an intense emotional attachment, taken from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

But is love really that simple? How do we draw the line between love, like and lust? is it a thin line seperating the three, or is it something which blurs our judgment.

While growing up, i learnt that love isn't about yourself. it's about others. if we get too caught up in pursuing something we love, say, our careers and forget and neglect ourselves and others around us, is it still called love? we give up everything and everyone just to have something we "love".

But let's move on to the more interesting stuff, love and relatioships. Love and relationships go hand in hand and that without love in a relationship, it's doomed for disaster. But what is love in a relationship, is it the fuzzy feeling we get whenever we see the other? is it the times when we rush out of our way to spend time with him or her? or is it the time when you think of the person and it brings a smile to your face? I would say that it's all this and not.

Love lasts longer than just the moments we spend with our signficant other, it's about how we make it a point to make things work and not because we're doing it for the sake of doing it, but because we want to. Not out of of material and physical gain, but because it makes the other person happy.
I would think love involves pain, it involves the times when you hurt and struggle, but you still carry on, and aren't the least bit disheartened. Like the things in life we have passion for, even if we stumble and fall, pick oursleves up and carry on. We can't expect a smooth journey all the time, i mean like, where's the fun without the bumpy road.

Well, i'm no expert on relationships, si mean, look at me, i haven't really actually had a proper normal or succeful (depends how u define it) realtionship. All i know is that we all get lonely sometimes, and it is nice to have someone around to depend on. Love doesn't stop at just our families, but our friends and even the things we pursue in life.

rux

from rux, on the 02 may 2006. from friends only blog, here.

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first things first. there is such a thing in this world as love. love is all over the place. love is an intangible entity that does transcend all boundaries. it cannot be touched nor held nor smelled, but it definitely can be seen and felt. we are the living consequence of love itself.

parental love, sisterly love, brotherly love, romantic love. a mother will do anything in the world for her own children, and so will a father. run into a burning building to save her child. not spend so her child can have a better education and better quality of life. protect her child's innocence. a boy from a destitute family gives his sister his half of the bread even though that's the only thing he will eat in the day. a boy readily donates part of his organ to his sister albeit thinking he will die after that when in actual fact he won't, but he doesn't know. children are a link between their parents. romantic love, however, is probably the most emphasised as far as i have seen.

love is about sacrifice, and that i cannot agree more. compromise. caring for a special someone, even if the love is unrequitted. why do people love? it's a feeling, love, and as we all know, we humans cannot control our feelings as much as we'd like to. why do some people love even though they know their love is not returned? it's not for materialistic reasons, nor company in lonesome times. why do we love then, we cannot explain. leave it to the cardiologists. why do some people like blue cheese, or purple dots, or the feel of satin against their skin, or have favourite colours? inexplicable, but it's the same thing.

you know you're in love, when you're willing to sacrifice the second most important thing in your life for it (assuming love is the first) and expect nothing in return. true, humans need company. but we do not need to love to have company. we have what we call friends. acquaintances. relatives. pets. these are all company. love is not just wanting someone to be there when everyone else is gone. love is wanting someone to be there at every intersection point in your life, to see you through thick and thin, to support and advise, to have fun and play with, to understand you and you understand him. love is being there for each other whenever the occasion calls for it - and even when it doesn't. love is a motivation in life. without it, your life will be a meaningless void. love is not just so you can get a flat. you get a flat because you want a love nest for the love that is already there. (that said, you can get a flat overseas even if you're single.)

yes, people do change. their dreams change. their needs and wants change. but without change, love would hold no meaning either. love is going through life and the changes it brings with someone else. love does exist between two people with different aspirations and dreams. love is exciting. it would be boring if both people have the exact same goals in life and exact same perspectives and exact same everything else. love is supporting each other and seeing each other through that mangled pathway to the final destination one had originally set foot on. and love, is definitely not infatuation. people in true love do not have sex in a hot tub and then say they are in love. they brew the love in a hot tub and then have sex in it. what i'm saying is that sex is a sequel or follow-up to love, not the other way round. (read: does not include sex-obsessed bastards)

love is an extremely thin and fragile piece of glass that we don't look out for and end up walking right through, thereby shattering it to pieces while we stare at the remains on the floor. we then say we do not believe in that piece of glass as a whole, because we haven't seen it as a whole, and how can anyone believe in something he or she hasn't yet seen? if you have never been hungry, you will never know what it is like to be hungry. if you have never been poor you will never know what it is like to be poor. or rich. or beautiful. or ugly. love is everywhere, but there just isn't enough to go around. if there were, hungry children would not go hungry and wars would not have been fought. everyone will be happily in love and no one will be skeptical about a thing called love.

ling

from ling's blog, on 01 may, 2006. here
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So, what exactly is (L)love?

Should i capitalise love? Love is capitalised upon by so many people. Well, girls especially, capitalise on love or the illusion of it such that they get things in return.

The things in question for girls, are, money, time, security, someone to hold the shopping bags, someone drive them around, or someone who never goes away for god knows what reason. Like Mr. Threeyears.

The things in question for the guys. Sex. Sex. And...sex. The hotter the girl, the quieter(in life, not in bed..yes, ha..ha.), the better. If you think you are not that base and vile, think again. What do you want? Something from the list below, (a), (b), (c)? Which? What combination? Everything? Something like...Boy A can give me (c), Boy B can give me (a)? Compartalizing your boyfriend/husband for one part of your life?

There is no such thing as love. Love is a moment. Love is not an emotion. It is one moment when you think, Ah ha! So that's what Shakespeare was talking about, that's what the drama and the poetry's about.

I am in total agreement with Alexis.

Yet, we all need this fleeting "emotion" like food, water and air. Why? Can we all not be alone? This will become an existential question of whether we can really establish even a connection between two people. But it is the right direction to step...

Words are arbitrary. How can you speak, when your words are misconstrued by even those most familiar to you? Mr. Threeyears and me had a conversation the other day. He was telling me he's going out on hot parties in the States, and starts talking about how the Asian babes are so hot. I merely said, Okay, great. Have fun. I have to go to work now.

He starts telling me that he is hurt; unhappy that I've been "attacking him" for his lifestyle. There he was partying away, and here I am slogging away for minimum wage. Total disconnect. Talking past each other, noise and more noise.

Well. So much for "love".

Is love:

a) Intellectual connection
b) Companionship
c) Passion
d) Security and Stability
e) A reason to live
f) A reason to die

The answer is 'g')None of the above

The nature of everyone around us, ourselves included, can serve only as transient slates. It is like water. Holds the reflection for a while. It evaporates. We can never manage to hold memories with clarity and accuracy in our minds. Everything becomes a view through a hazy window, even one second after the event. Toward the end of your life, that window closes upon everyone else. You mother and father's would have shut theirs on you years before. And you wonder, what was that all about. Then your children will ask the same question. We keep disconnecting. And connections are already few and far in between.

The place where you came from, your mother, is an obscure place where your father is confused. If I go into the technical aspects, I'm afraid the virgin boys will blush so let's not go there. Confusion. Why do we have children? Why do we want to have children?

There is no reason to have any. There is no reason not to have any. Just like there is no reason to live because it will all end one day, but there is no reason to die either.

Ironically, living for someone makes you a psycho. Dying for someone also makes the psychotic. Don't try this at home. (Interesting. Have we found the meaning of life right here? Fall in love, and you don't need Jesus! Or the Buddha! Or Allah! Just live for him/her. That is religion. Woohooo!)

Back to topic.

Love does not happen by chance. If anyone ever tells you that, they are insane. Run, run as far and as fast as you possibly can. If you want to attempt any of the (a), (b), (c), (d), or (f) listed above, you MUST spend time with the person. But success of having any one of these items ticked off is impossible. There will never be a place where you will really understand, even through music, drama, art or actions. The mind will never grasp the entirety of the other human. You can barely grasp the entirety of your own self. Then again, if you do not achieve any of the above, but choose to continue anyway, you will simply be doing what I have described. You will talk past each other. You will disconnect, as you always have. You will never ever feel anything besides the fire in your loins where your children came from, where you came from. You will never feel anything, other than the restless fidget you get when you walk around stupid places like Orchard road alone. Which is the exact moment you think, wouldn't it be nice if I had someone to hold hands with to walk down this stretch of crowded street? Wouldn't it be nice if there was someone to snuggle up to?

That is the "moment" the right person comes along, and you think, Ah, how nice. Just the way you say "Ah how nice" when you get hot tea and scones on a rainy day. (Listening to the So Nice bossa song thingy would be appropriate now.) Yeah, just that scones and tea goes down the alleys of your bowels, just like your "moment".

Looking out for other humans will not make "love" happen as Alf puts it. If you were drowning/dying of thrist/robbed etc I would help you. I look out for you. It is human nature's compassion. Either you have it, or you don't. That does not mean I love you. Unless you mean it in a crazy christian love thy neighbour sense. (I'll talk about religion another time.)

Since the "moment" defines love, we all look for that moment, but it might never come. Once it arrives, it leaves just as promptly. It might leave something behind for you to look on, through your memory. Sometimes you never even acknowledge its presence.

You can continue looking into your hazy window for your version of love. It will be a view no one else can see or make sense of, because we will disconnect. After that moment.

alf

in response, alf wrote a post on his blog with his views on april 30, 2006, here.
//

What is love, really?

Allow me to propose my thesis - there is something called love.

Let me explain: I define love as an unconditional act. When I "love" someone, I go out of my way to do something for that person without expectations. That means, without expecting a reward in terms of money, favours, sex, whatever.

Another condition to prove love is that whatever you do for the other person must be inconvenient for you. It's very easy if you buy something for someone with your spare change. You did not make any sacrifice. Anyone with the means to satisfy another person can claim it to be an act of "love".

Love is really a sacrifice. Love is when you give up something you have or want for somebody else's sake, even though you feel the pinch. It can be your television programme, your hobby, your lifestyle, your career, even your life.

You can love both men and women (let us not talk about animals or objects or ideas) - there are no boundaries to love.

In a world that has become systematically pragmatic, it is very difficult to find examples of love. Why should I do something for you when you don't do anything for me? Today, we think first of ourselves, then of others. This will have very dire consequences for society. Humans who do not look out for each other cannot weather crises.

There are many implications of not loving. Do you not consider the person behind you on the escalator, waiting to move while you hold hands with your partner? Do you not consider the driver waiting at the lights while you saunter across the road on a green man? Do you think that public transport may be better for the earth, or do you buy a car anyway for your own convenience?

Love is about the other at the expense of the self. It has nothing to do with romance, friendship, companionship, or barter. It is not about win-win situations. It is really about making the world a better place, a more human place - if that is what human means - to live in.

Of course we could say, "that's not how our businesses were built, that's not how our nation was founded." But of course, I am ever idealistic, and of course, there is always this thing called love.

a meme

this is what started everything. by alexis, Saturday, April 29, 2006 on this post
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There really is no such thing as love. it is a label given by society, to gather everything under that four-lettered word for things people take very long to explain if they have to analyse it. so you just call it love. because its one syllable, and romantic sounding. a sweeping, grand sound of tongue rolling off that long soft consonant.

come on, give it a thought. humans need each other for companionship. they want company. its just a simple business of needs and wants. not love, silly. you want security, you need money. you want someone to be there for you when everyone else is gone. you need a person because humanity deems it necessary for its propagation. or because you want to apply for that hdb flat. or you want someone to bitch to, to have intellectual conversations with, to hold hands with. not love, silly.

it is an explanation given for infatuation. because infatuation sounds like flatulance. so you call it love. it is simply a matching of needs and wants, and when you find the perfect match, you join it by Love. but many a times, the matching will not last, because people change and their needs and wants change. their perceptions, or to be more harsh, illusions, change. and then its gone. we are fickle by nature; its not about character, really.

yet we fool ourselves and in doing so fool everyone else. we decide to attribute all these to love so that we can be free not to think about what we actually are doing. so that we can blame irrational love for all the errors in judgement. because "love happened". bullshit.

its time for people to see it as it is man. call it sex, call it financial security, call it companionship, lust, infatuation, hormones, friendship. but don't bloody hell call it love. because there is no such thing.