What is love? Oh the love! When we talk about this feeling, thousands of ideas, definitions and interpretations come to our mind. It can be the love between a couple, love between friends, mother or father love for their child, love for animals… we can't explain it, we just know that it's good to feel – loving and being loved. But what if we needed to define, for some reason, what love is? Could you tell?
the literal meaning
Even in dictionaries love appears to be defined in various ways. Its meanings are many.
Start like this:
(a.mor)
m.
1. Feeling that makes someone want the good of someone else or something.
But over the course of definitions, the meaning of love dissolves and becomes several things that involve affection, well-wanting, empathy, care, zeal, dedication and attachment. There is also talk about the different forms of love: love of neighbor, love at first sight, self-love, platonic love… It even involves the materialization of carnal love, which is “making love”. Or associate this feeling with a sweet and cordial person – who has never said “so and so is a love of person”, to define that she is kind, kind and sympathetic?
But love goes beyond glossaries, beyond what semantics can establish. Love is often an independent, transformative and powerful feeling. How is he seen among thinkers, followers of a religion and philosophers?
Love as a case study
Although the experience of love has a very particular character for each person, over time a lot has been said (and still is!) about love.
Love is sung, recorded in history and placed as the focus of reflections. It has been debated by religion, philosophy, and popular culture. There is no lack of subject matter. Every area has a definition (or attempted definition) of what love is.
What is love, according to mythology
Every mythology has its gods and goddesses representing love, as well as stories that deal with the theme, in the most varied ways, from a successful love to tragic and impossible loves.
In Norse mythology, Frigga is the goddess of love, union and fertility. Freya, also in Norse mythology, is the goddess of love and is associated with sex, lust, beauty and fertility. Krishna is the god of love in Indian mythology, as well as Lakshmi, who represents, also in Indian mythology, the goddess of love and material and spiritual wealth.
Among the Greeks, there were numerous gods of love: Eros (love and fertility), Pothos (passion, erotic yearning), Himeros (erotic desire), Anteros (reciprocal love), Hymenaeus (marriage) and Aphrodite (love, beauty and lust). ).
The Romans worshiped love through the god Cupid (which represents love personified) and the goddess Venus (love and beauty).
Yoruba mythology brings the orishas as its representatives. Oxum is the deity of fresh water, fertility and love. Yemanja can also be related to feeling, as it protects love and revenge against broken love.
The Aztec civilization has Xochipilli as the god of love and also of other areas: art, games, beauty, dance, youth, flowers and music.
In Mayan mythology, Ixchel is the goddess of the rainbow. She is also related to love, medicine, weaving and motherhood.
The pantheon of gods of Tupi mythology (which is also our mythology) has Rudá as the god of love (able to awaken love in the hearts of men), Tambatajá as the god of love and protector against all dangers and Uiapuru as the god of love. in the winged world.
What is love in literature?
In literature, each literary school approached love from its point of view, giving the feeling a particular focus, which defined the structure, theme and reality of each work, also taking into account the historical context.
We had troubadour poetry bringing a paradoxical love, between desire and the divine. The love and friend songs portrayed forbidden and unrequited, inconceivable love. Classicism, on the other hand, brought “love” and “Amor” in Camões’ poems. While love (written in lowercase letters) was a feeling specific to each person, Love (spelled with a capital letter) was Neoplatonic - an idealized love, which transcended external beauty, a harmonious and serene feeling, capable of leading the being to a certain degree of elevation. It was an intangible feeling, the result of extensive and intense reflection. For him, Love was almost an entity.
Arcadian poets presented a loving conventionalism with formulas that resulted in well-being, simulating perfection. Already with Romanticism, exacerbated sentimentality idealized love. The famous phase called "evil of the century" exalted impossible loves, making love and suffering practically two sides of the same coin. In Symbolism, romantic values ​​were far-fetched. Some works were marked by the sublimation of love, in others, erotic love was addressed. Sometimes it was a love lost, unattainable and, for that reason, regretted.
Realism began to oppose romantic ideals, associating love with social interests and viewing sentiment with a certain skepticism. All this was reinforced by Naturalism, which emerged at the same time. Later, Parnassianism brought a more carnal vision of love, far from the standards of Romanticism.
But literary schools did not bring only love for people, among objects of desire or feelings. There were phases in which nationalism was exalted, sometimes bordering on pride (an exaggerated love for the country) – especially in Modernism and the first generation of Romanticism.
What is love for religions?
As a rule, religion is synonymous with love. In fact, love should be the link between all religions. Although not what we have seen over time, love should be the driving force behind religious practice.
Love can mean a doctrinal basis, a reason for reflection, having a mystical conception or a didactic character. Specifically, what is love for different doctrines and religions?
For Christianity, love is not just a feeling, it is a way of life, it is the Christian principle. So much so that Jesus summarizes the 10 commandments in two main ones: to love God above all things and to love our neighbor as ourselves. God's love for humanity caused Him to give His only begotten Son for our salvation.
Buddhism sees love as the only force capable of ending hate. Beyond a mere feeling, Buddhists see love as a practice, an action. Love is an exercise of help and compassion.
For Hinduism, the purest and most sublime form of love is maternal. The mother gives herself completely to the child without expecting retribution or recognition. This is a fact, because carrying the child for nine months in the belly, going through childbirth, breastfeeding and caring for a being during the puerperium is a lot of love. Although it's not easy, women give themselves completely to this task, using instinct as strength. And that instinct is called love.
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In the spiritist doctrine, love is the transforming energy that resides in each of us. Spiritism is based on the teachings of Jesus, especially that of loving your neighbor as yourself. An excerpt from the work “The Gospel According to Spiritism” translates the concept of love as follows: “Love summarizes the entire doctrine of Jesus, because it is the feeling par excellence, and feelings are the instincts raised to the height of the progress made” .
At his starting point, man has only instincts; more advanced and corrupted, he has only sensations; more educated and purified, he has feelings; and love is the refinement of feeling”.
what is love for you?
Most important of all is how you see and practice love. It should always be related to good things, such as empathy, respect, solidarity, responsibility, affection, understanding and acceptance of the other.
We are living in a time when hate has been victorious in a battle in which love has not asked to enter. It is the hatred of what is different, of what goes against what some people think is right. There needs to be more love in the world and between people. And Not just as a religious principle, but as a purpose in life, regardless of sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, political position, and other convictions. And love has no form. It could be a person, it could be your pet (animals, by the way, are the pure spirit of love), it could be an attitude, it could be a look. It takes love at the base of everything.
And for you, what is love?
