One of the first things that pops into my head when I hear those words are song lyrics like, “what is love? Baby, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more,” and “what’s love but a second-hand emotion?” “your love is better than ice cream” etc.

But really, in my opinion, love - romantic or other - can’t be defined the way other words can. You can’t give it parameters like you can fear, for example. Love can be a glance, a smile, a hug, a note, a flower, a blue sky…. Love is something that you can give and something that you can receive. No matter what form it comes in or from whom, it’s love so long as it comes from the heart.

Love should be shared; otherwise its full potential or full strength can never be realized.

Love means bending over backwards for some things and for other things doing backhand springs, even if you didn’t think you could.

Love means even when you are physically apart from someone you love they aren’t really gone.

Love has to be unselfish. Even when it isn’t returned it can still exist as long as it is true.

Love cannot hurt, but the absence of love can.

The only cost of love should be sacrifice. But this sacrifice should never be offered or abused. It should be unspoken.

With romantic love I have found that it takes two people for love to bloom. There was a man that I thought I loved truly and deeply. However, that love was not returned and so the seed of love, albeit a big seed because it seemed to take up most of my heart, died. And with it, that part of my heart died. I will never be able to love like that again, but I will be able to love someone else differently.

The difference between romantic love and plutonic love is desire for no one else but that one person. (I won’t get into marriage because I do not feel qualified to say how you will know exactly whom it is you will marry. I think it’s different for everyone.) I do think that you can be “in love” more than once. Falling in and out of love with someone is also something that can happen more than once. I say this because I think love can be killed but it can grow in a different place for different reasons at different times.

Love also changes. This is true of both romantic and non-romantic love. People change. Thus, love for them must change also. If it doesn’t then the relationship becomes fake. Say you are dating someone and for some reason you break up. If you truly loved that person, then there will be more than just physical love, also known as desire. Through the hurt and the pain that often comes with a break up, you should still be able to love them. No one can change so much that there isn’t something that you can’t love about them, even if it’s something miniscule. In the best cases you can go on to love them as a friend and still treasure things about them.

When it comes to friends I think Garth Brooks said it best, “tell that someone that you love, just what you’re thinking of if tomorrow never comes.” I firmly believe that every opportunity you get to tell someone that holds a special place in your heart “I love you” you should do so. Whenever I leave one of my good friends I tell them that I love them and the end of all my on-line conversations with “love you bye.” There is a certain someone that tells me “stop it” every time I say that but I never will because I always want that person to know that they are valuable to me and that they are irreplaceable.

Finally, as usual, there is a song that says something better than I could so I’m going to quote one last song…. “You can’t buy it at the store try it on for size, then bring it back if it don’t fit right. No love, it ain’t like that. You can’t trade it in like an automobile, too many miles and rust on the wheels. No love, it ain’t like that. Love ain’t that easy to define. You can’t build it by design. It takes it own sweet time. It don’t fall from the sky like tiny drops of rain that hits you right between the eyes one day. No love, it ain’t like that. You can’t put your money down and just roll the dice, and think you’re gonna win it all some night. No love, love ain’t like that.” - Faith Hill

jazz - your ever-present conscience