Power to Love: A Jimi Hendrix song

And our new topic… Love.

It was April’s idea, I swear.

But really, what is love, how do I and my peers find love and all that jazz in something like high school? Do we even find love in high school? How can you tell if that relationship you have is you falling in love, or you just falling “in like?

First off, what is love? Similar to April, I think I’ll have to look this one up, because I have no idea how to define it. So, apparently “love is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. Depending on context, love can have a wide variety of intended meanings.” (Wikipedia) I’d say that is pretty accurate. It is “any of a number of emotions,” and so since it can be a few things then how do we know we’re in love. And what about those times I say “I love chocolate cake,” does that meant that I want to have a loving relationship with chocolate cake? Or does it actually just mean that I find chocolate cake delicious (if you can’t tell, I recently ate a piece, or two, of very good chocolate cake)? Both of these can be true, but the probably underlying meaning of it is the second option. When love is used it can be many different things, it can be physical love of something: beauty, glamour, grace, ability, et cetera; or it can be the more mental aspects of love, the love of something for what it makes us feel (in a non physical way). Because, I can love both TV and people, but when I say I love a person I’m implying something different than when I say that I love Scrubs.

When I say that I love a person I feel that I generally am implying something of a connection, on a mental and physical level with that person. Parents are an example, you love your mother both mentally (because of some type of bond between the two of you because of your parent-child relationship) and physically (because you were born by her and she cared for you for all of your life). But what about friends? People tell their friends that they love them all the time. This probably happens more often than a lot of teenagers telling their parents they love them. But what does this love mean. Because it isn’t family love and it isn’t romantic love, it is friendship love. And that friendship love is one of the most powerful in the long run. Actually, let me take a moment to redirect my thoughts, because I don’t really know where they are going at the moment, and I feel I should reset them.

Ok, so what do I think about people saying “I love you,” in a serious manner to their boyfriend or girlfriend? This it seems happens a lot in high school relationships. But as a child still, how can we except to find true love in a high school relationship? Of course, sometimes people date in high school and then go on to be married and live happily ever after. But how often does that happen, and can you call holding hands in the halls between classes love? Of course that isn’t really a fair analysis, and some high school relationships are very strong and committed and last a very long time. But at what point do they become love, and when does the use of the word love in the context of a relationship become usable? How can someone determine that? I know some people would think that the use of the word and its normal connotation for a “forever and ever I’ll love you” type idea is totally unusable in the setting of a high school relationship, but what about other meanings of the word? Why can’t the word love take on a new meaning and be used as a simple term of endearment. When the word takes on new meaning between the two parties in a relationship, and so that the old connotation falls away and the new takes its place then is the usage of love acceptable in my mind, though, to be inclusive, there could be a couple of examples where both parties are actually “in love” in a traditional sense, but really, who knows what that means. So, when the time is right the usage of love is acceptable in my mind, as long as there are certain limits set up. I don’t know if you can call dating for two weeks love, but a year, that could be love, or maybe dedication. But that then gets into what love is made of. And I don’t want to get into that because this is pretty long already.

This post feels incomplete. I don’t feel like I extrapolated as much as I should have. Like I said though, it’s pretty long. And, just to reiterate, if you want to be a guest contributor, see my previous post for emails of April and I.