What is Love? Are you born with it? Does it require action?

Been studying up on Love.

I've always felt more forms of love than we have words for. That being said, there are words for types of love to study as well as studies to read about passion and compassion or happiness that correlate with love.

It's not rocket science to understand that happiness and love are 2 different things. I made two different sets of notes for them. Some people seem to intertwine the two, and they do intertwine, but the can exist separately. Happiness is a byproduct, though. Love is innate,..isn't it?

Are we born with the capacity to love or do we learn it? What is love?

Love is something we have to experience, and we have to give it away both to others and to ourselves. Love can be shared, passed to another, but only in the sense that they mimic our emotion. They can't have our brains with our specific hormones. But a child born into a lack of love still has the capacity to learn about love, to feel it, to express it later in life. As with other emotions, love is a choice. You can feel it, or you can suppress it.

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Depression saps your ability to feel love (for yourself), loved (by others), or loving (giving to others). But depression is not a choice. Choosing love can fight off a bout of depression, but not kill it. It can lie dormant in your psyche for ages and suddenly rear up, robbing you of your capacity to love, manifested in not being able to feel happiness.

Love is caring deeply. Love is putting others before yourself and your needs.

But can a form of love be felt without doing anything about it? Does love require action? I may love humanity, but choose not to donate to causes to end world hunger, for example. I may love dogs, but choose not to volunteer at the local shelter. Do I really love them?

You can fall out of love, too. Something else takes priority in your life above that thing and you move from sacrificing yourself to care for it to liking and appreciating the thing but leaving it mostly alone. This could be a person, group, or object. Without the action, you no longer appear to love it.

I don't yet know what spin I will put on this research when I finally compile it all. I could take a religious stance, quoting Biblical passages, or I could take a personal stance, sharing memories memoir style, or I could write a non-fictional facts and figures kind of piece.

I'd love to hear your comments! :P



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