Love is not a feeling.

“Love is not a feeling. Love is an action, an activity. . .Genuine love implies commitment and the exercise of wisdom. . . . love as the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.....true love is an act of will that often transcends ephemeral feelings of love or cathexis, it is correct to say, 'Love is as love does'.” - M. Scott Peck

It has been a while since I last dissected this definition of love by M. Scott Peck. I have always thought that this definition is particularly boring. I am such a hopeless romantic that I would imagine love to always involve sparks, fire, intensity, and passion. I guess I have subconsciously rejected this ridiculously boring definition of love because of my ideals. Love, of course, starts with an attraction; be it physical, intellectual, emotional.. attraction nonetheless. Yet, as I get older though not necessarily wiser in matters of the heart, I guess M. Scott Peck starts to make sense. May this article be the start of a series about love that would dissect this particular passage from M. Scott Peck and several other definitions as I need an outlet for all the pent up emotions I have inside.

Love is not a feeling. Yes, it may start out as an attraction to another person but it is not a feeling. Feelings would be being sad, being happy, being angry, being reluctant, being doubtful, being afraid. Feelings can abruptly change depending on your mood, depending on your current situation, heck, even depending on the weather. Feelings change when the person we are talking to would suddenly get surly or would be angry. Feelings change when things do not favor us. Real love is able to move forward, able to evolve, able to adapt with anything life may throw in its path.
Love is an action, an activity.. Love is not something to be kept inside the lover's heart. It is meant to be shared. It is an ongoing activity. It is an action word. Love is not just a noun, it is a verb. Love is not just whispering sweet nothings to the ears of the beloved. It is not just writing love letters or sending emails or sending text messages to the beloved. Albeit, those are actions too and others might already be very happy with just doing those to their beloved or receiving those actions from their lovers. Yet, love requires more than those "little" things we do romantically. Love is going out of our way to do things for the beloved not just once or twice or do things because the mood is romantic. Love is doing things for the beloved every single chance we get and even if the mood is not as romantic as we hope it to be. Love is when we still do things for that other person even if we don't feel like it.

I admit it is hard to follow those 2 things mentioned above. We all want to have that giddy feeling we get when we meet someone new. We all want to keep the passion and intensity that we feel for the person we are attracted to. I want to keep that feeling in me for as long as I can. But again, love is not a feeling. Also, it is in human nature to ask what do I get out of it? Am I not doing everything yet for the beloved? If I just continue to give, continue to understand, continue to do things for the beloved, how about me? I have given the one I love the very best of me and what has that gotten me so far?

And the 1 million dollar question is what if that love I am giving is unrequited? Well that just sucks and I will surely have a follow up blog post on this unrequited love business.