In Heinlein’s words
When’s the last time you thought about love? Not whooptee, not hot monkey sex, not knee-jerk reactions to a pretty face across the room, but the actual elusive emotion that guys find hard to talk about and girls apparently can’t get enough of.
It’s one of the poles that define us, yet, like spirituality, it’s something most of us rarely think about. Part of this is because it’s hard to pin down, with different meanings to different people. I don’t have the wisdom (or patience) to draw cosmic conclusions on the relativity of feeling, though, so I’ll limit myself to personal experience.
To me, love is a condition where someone else’s happiness is essential to your own. Love your neighbor, love your children, love your partner, love your dog, love your car – none of it rings true if you don’t want them to be happy above all. It’s agape, eros, philia and storge rolled into one, and one of the nice things about being alive.
On a slightly related note, being nagged at makes guys miserable. See where I’m going here?
