What is Love?

I was walking to the library tonight, and passed over one of those sidewalk chalk things that said "What is Love?" and had some website address listed. While I'm fairly sure it was just one of those Spartan Christian Fellowship gimmicks, the question really struck a nerve. I know when most people hear the words "What is Love" images of Chris Kattan, Will Farrell, and a Night-at-the-Roxbury-themed head bobbing begins, but it doesn't change the fact that it's really a great question.

I've been pondering that for a while, in addition to how exactly does it happen? Where's the line that gets crossed between love and like? I think the answer is there is no real one, it's one of those unfortunate grey area things. God I hate those! The reason I pose this question is because I've become over the past couple years incredibly aware of the massive rift between the amount your family cares for you, and the amount friends and acquaintances care for you. Specifically, as I've mentioned before, I find a good litmus test of how much someone cares for you to be how often they think of you. Though by no means a quantitative quality, how often someone thinks about you is demonstrated frequently through the way they act, their mannerisms, and how often they mention you.

Like for example getting calls from someone, or when someone is going out with their group of friends when you're not there and decide to call you to see what you're up to, or when they randomly stop by your place. All these are good indications that someone is thinking about you. And that is a profound notion. The notion that you've had that distinct of an impact on someone, that you've so visibly shaken their status quo that they are willing to push aside a part of their incredibly compacted and messy mind, a la Dreamcatcher's cool little mind filing system, and make space in their current affairs for you.

Now with that idea established, the idea of someone that cares for you, I want to elaborate on what exactly love is. Though poets have been trying for thousands and thousands of years to develop "such an insipid, and human notion as love" as Agent Smith puts it to Neo, I figure I could contribute in this ever encompassing idea, western or not. Now how exactly do you get there, to that point of someone caring about you that much? I've mentioned before that I'm boring... though I guess I have my moments. On the overall though, most people are boring right? They just have their moments. Regardless, my real question is, how do you get some random person off the street, and interact with them, and have positive, dynamic interactions with them, to the point that you can say you love them, and vice versa? I'm talking about someone outside your family.

I think to be able to accomplish that is a great feat, and speaks of a person's character. To be able to get someone to make that kind of a commitment, to allow someone to say that you are the most important (living) person in their world, that they obsess and constantly think about what you're doing has got to be an incredible feeling. Why exactly am I writing about this? It isn't because anything exactly like this has happened to me, so rest assured kiddos. But the question has been triggered greatly by those recent events that have definitely been interesting concerning this here online journal, and I guess I do possess the ability to make a splash. That in itself, experiencing causality first-hand, and realizing it, is a pretty cool feeling. Love itself is a kind of causality thing, only the effect is the recripocal of just being yourself, which is cool because thats a lot to get, out of simply being no one but you. I'm sure that people'll be a little bit freaked out... Oh he's talking about love again, is he in love with someone? I kind of like that, the edginess that it causes in people. It shows they really care. Is that cruel of me? Maybe, but at least I get a kick out of it. Something I don't get very often, being my incredibly cynical, boring, sarcastic, intellectual, nerdy, and generally very... very weird self.