What IS love?

One might ask, do the reasons for loving even matter?

What are the causes of love?

Where is love? And is the direction of our love real, or just an illusion?

Shouldn't love be something that we do without reason?

Does love go somewhere like the soul or spirit after death? Or does it rot within our perishable bodies? What happens to a love that perishes?

Is love that I feel even mine to begin with?

If love is without reason, cause, locus or direction, birth or death, object, or even subject . . . . then what is it?

Might there be equations that define love? A differential of loving, an integral of attraction?

Possibly yes. But they will only approximate, the behaviors of love just as physics attempts to model the behavior of matter and energy. Light and matter are not the equations that describe them.

Love, like gravity and light, seems to hold some universal quality. Is love like dark matter, that= invisible stuff holding galaxies together? If love is heavy or light, is love governed by gravity?

Love might simply be our animal perception of one of the binding forces that hold the universe together. Love has been called an emotion. Emotions are the study of psychology. Yet in that universe, the science is also inadequate, the psychologist all the names and labels he throws at human conditions, simply mask his lack of understanding.

Like the physicist's model for gravity, or the strong or weak forces of nuclear attraction, love may simply be an emotional model for defining ineffable forces that are much greater than any of us. Yet physics fails, to explain love. The corollary breaks down, dissolves into a myriad differential equations, each without a pulse of life.

We do not know where it comes from, or where it goes when we are done loving. We know it is everywhere, yet we seek it. Love seems to act as an incentive and a reward, but also as punishment, but performs inconsistently at both. Economics won't explain love.

Love can come from anyone anywhere and be directed at anyone, anywhere. While it may be said love is blind, lovers feel gifted by second sight. Does love obey the laws of optics?

We know it cannot be found and yet when it is inside us we know it is there, stronger than we know who we are. The laws of physics of conservation of energy can't explain love.

Love can be empowering, enervating, debilitating, enriching, denigrating, or even fatal. Love can be destructive or creative. Cosmology and astrology can't possibly deal with love's complexity. Yet love always seems true to its own laws.

So what are those laws? Are there any?

I love this or that, this place, that river, this woman, that man, this child, . . .

We do not create it, nor can we. We do not destroy it. Nor can we. We give it to those who have it, and to those who don't. We ourselves may not have it, yet it is possible to give to one who has plenty.

Love may seem similar to water in a glass, in our bodies, or the sea. Sometimes you get a little dose and know it won't last. Yet it is still water. You can horde it, you can waste it you, but it won't be destroyed. You can transform, it break it down, yet it returns, as water.

You can drown in it or die from lack of it.

It can power the world.

Yet if you horde water it will go flat. Sunlight may not be captured, but the energy of sunlight can be. Where does the sunlight go after it's energy has been captured? Physicists have answers to these questions, but about love, they do not.

Love may transform the behavior of water, this has been shown scientifically, but the simile breaks down again. Love and water are not the same.

Yet how we treat that water seems to me to be the nature of love. How do we treat the air? Do we show grattitude for sunlight?

All people cherish love, the thirsty and fallible cherish water in a desert. Yet water seems everywhere except where needed most. If only we could all stay nourished by it forever.

Religions promise oceans of unconditional love. Global warming promises too much water - the icecaps will melt. Can there be an excess of love?

When love becomes doctrine, we lose it. The worst acts of violence, are often conducted in the names of creeds that preach love. 

Love moves freely, independently and in ways superior to all life. It can flee or reappear anywhere, anytime.

Some would say managing love is about managing expectations. Know your love. Don't expect it all the time.

Love seems to demand terms, to flow where and when it wants. 

Know love when it comes your way. Recognize it. Pass it on.