Love is what you make it

What is love? It’s the perennial question that appears in the autograph books that little girls love passing around. You’d think it was such a normal question, just like the other ones on the other pages. When is your birthday? Where do you go to school? What are your likes and dislikes? What is your favorite color? What is love?

To think that grade school kids cheerfully answer these autograph books all the time and scribble their attempts to define love, something that even grown men and women can’t seem to grasp. One time I looked at my old autograph book and was amused at the variety of answers. Some of them were actually quite logical. First, there was the ever-popular God is love, which shows that my classmates listened to our Christian Living classes in grade school. Then, there was Love is Mommy and Daddy. Love is my family. Blood, indeed, is thicker than water, especially in elementary where your favorite gimmick buddies were your parents and siblings. (How strange that social circles expand as you get older, yet you still manage to leave your family out of yours.) And then, the classics: Love is kissing. Love is a feeling that you feel. Love is a mystery! Love is loving. Love is secret! Oh, me and my profound friends.

Even at such tender ages, grade school kids have already picked up ideas of what love is. As we are older than them, we find their concepts juvenile and cute, and simply chuckle at their concepts of love. However, would we be able to answer that question? Have years of living and being exposed to all things loved and unloved taught us what exactly love is? Suppose someone showed up with a magic mirror and asked you to look in your own eyes and find the answer within: What is love? I wouldn’t be surprised to hear you blabbering about how love is loving.

As we grow older, we learn more and more about that strange feeling called love. We start to witness it instead of simply hearing about it. We see it in our parents, in husbands and wives, in boyfriends and girlfriends, in books, in movies, in music. We’ve seen the couples. We’ve heard the stories. We’ve memorized lines from romantic comedies and lyrics from love songs. We’ve pondered on the majesty, mystery, magic, and (sometimes) misery that is love.

So, how come we still sound like children when we try to define love? Somehow, we always sound sappy, corny, and incredibly immature. What is love?

The closest that people have come to trying to define love is describing it. I’ve read and heard so many metaphors about it. My friend Bea used to churn out her profundities so often that we wanted to compile it and call them Bea-isms. Love is diving – you have to take the plunge. We’d burst out laughing every time she came up with a new one. Just last week, we had a writing exercise in our Filipino class, and my classmates used a math equation to describe love. It spoke of the frustration of trying to understand what x and y were, the labor one had to exert to balance the equation, and the rewarding feeling in the end.

Iget a chockfull of e-mails all about love. Love is like a basketball game. Love is like a computer. Love is like riding a bus. Love is choosing a path. Love is running through a cornfield and finding the stalk that you want. I’m starting to believe that people can take anything, absolutely anything, and relate it to love. If Ewan McGregor could breathlessly declare "Love is like oxygen!" in Moulin Rouge, why should we stop there? Love is like deodorant! Love is like your favorite pair of stiletto shoes! Love is like a highlighter! Love is a ten-wheeler truck going at 90 kilometers per hour!

To tell you the truth, the question, what is love? as simple as it is, can leave people speechless and dumbfounded. They know that the four-letter, monosyllabic word stands for something so beautiful and intricate. They also know that it’s one of the most misused words ever. So they try to give it justice by describing how it is – but they still can’t find the right words!

The problem with people is that they always try to define what love is. They assume that a perfect phrasing of ideas will condense everything about love in a few words. Love is universal, yes, but it’s the feelings that make it so, not the meaning. Every time we try to establish what love is accurately, we’re limiting the encompassing quality of love.

Why do you think everyone has a different answer for "What is love?" Love is everywhere and in everyone, but manifests itself differently for each person. That’s why love will always be special. It will always be unique. It’s the way we love that gives meaning to the word. Words can never compare to a child’s trusting embrace, or a sweetheart’s patience and support, or the sacrifices that parents make everyday. That’s why it’s so hard to tell people that we love them because we think words can’t capture the feeling. I guess that’s how you know when it’s the real thing. People today say I love you all the time, and I’ve heard some of them spew it so easily and frequently. Sure, it’s touching to hear the words being said to you, but when you see someone afraid to say them, they might just still believe in the power of the three words.

It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow. It’s another day of greetings cards, dozens of beautiful roses, chocolates (and extra calories), hugs, kisses, and I love yous. Febuary 14 is the day we celebrate love, and I think before we bring out the red shirts and cut out paper hearts, we should all stop and remember what love is. We can’t define it but we can live it. If we live to love, maybe we’ll understand what it is.