"the greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love, and be loved in return." ~Christian, in the Moulin Rouge.

you've all heard the old saying, that old bible verse about love.  "Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." It's in first corinthians, i b'leeve.  anyway.

everything it says is true - love *is* patient, kind, etc, etc.  but these are big, grand words attached to broad and rather over-our-head concepts.  I mean, sure we all know what patience and kindness is.  But when you get too out in the open, too broad and vague, it tends to lose a little of its meaning.  Saying "I love you" is great, but love itself is another one of those big powerful concepts that people have a very limited grasp on, and most people never fully understand.  i mean, if people *understood* love, fully, would there be as many issues in the world as there are? would people get their knickers in a twist over gay marriage, or would the divorce rate as upsettingly close to fifty percent as it is? but we're not going to get into either of those.  because those are big concepts that are kind of out there themselves.

no, today we focus on the little things. on what love *really* is.  in its most basic, simplistic forms.  this is a reminder, after all, to someone i love very, very much.  you see, everyone has doubts.  when things are going well, you're waiting for murphy's law to kick in. and while unhappily most of the time, it *does* eventually kick in, one thing it can almost never interfere with is love.

so, we get to the question.  what *is* love, and how do i intend to explain it?

... you must understand, i could write on the topic for days, and still not be done. but we'll try to short it up a bit.  so we'll only use scattered examples.  and for those of you who think i've already been sickeningly sweet and cute up to this point should stop reading and go find yourself some insulin, coz it's about to get a whole lot more.

love is feeling more wanted and more accepted in a single afternoon than you have in the rest of your life combined.  love is being able to spend nearly six hours with someone, doing just about nothing but sitting there, and not only enjoy every second but wish for more time when you have to say goodbye.  love... is a shoulder to cry on when the world cannot possibly hope to comfort you, but somehow that shoulder does.  love is holding hands whenever you can, just because it's a way to continually have contact with someone, even if it's just a little.  love is two arms sneaking around you from behind to hold you close and a gentle kiss planted on the top of your head.  love is attempting to make cookies with too much bisquick and laughing as they come out kind of funny tasting, but you eat them anyway.

they're not so bad with milk, after all.  

love is curling up in a giant chair even though it's seventy or eighty odd degrees inside and a ninety-eight degree blanket might not be the best idea.  love is feeling warm, even though you just got out of a pool and it's dark and kind of chilly out, simply because you're sitting next to someone.  love is getting online just to see if that one single person is on, and feeling sad that they aren't, even though everybody else you talk to *is*.  love is only being able to fall asleep by pretending with all the power of your imagination that that special person is there, curled next to you or around you.  love is wishing for time to speed up and slow down simultaneously, because you want it to go slower during the times you get to spend together, and faster, so that the time when you can *always* be with them gets here sooner.  love is being able to spend nearly an hour listing every reason you can think of to say why you love someone, and still not exhaust even a quarter of what you want to say.  

love is.  and that's all.

"... for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health..."