What is LOVE?

It's Valentine's Day and I am single (eversince, now, and forever). It makes me want to think how lonesome I am, but does love confine itself only to those who are willing to spend much every February 14 for chocolates and flowers? How makitid! At least, nobody has yet slapped that on my face, otherwise expect WWIII to erupt in no time.

Anyway, let's not talk about how this thought makes me feel so miserable of my present condition. Let me put it this way, what's in the very word "valentine" that shoots up hormonal activities come February 14 [for certainly, they (lovers) do not go gaga over "happy" or "day"]? That would have been something. But, are they? Furthermore, does love only engulf the hearts of men and women on that particular day that the rest of the year, nobody seems to be as special as they are on a Valentine's Day? In other words, why do we only celebrate hearts' day once a year? Doesn't one love his wife, her boyfriend everyday? Why? Why? Why? Well, Billy, that's simple! Walang pera to spend everyday. Is that it?

And so the question remains, what is love?

Somebody said, there are as many forms of philosophy as there are philosophers. Let me apply that here. I, to a certain extent, believe that it fits the situation. So, paraphrasing thus, there are as many definitions of love as there are lovers in the world. Very sound! Don't you think? Nevertheless, I have yet to find or formulate mine. I have tried in vain to find answers. My spiritual director told me, that it is because I have rationalized love so much as if it is an object of study. I ask myself, am I in love if I am attracted to someone? If so, then love is simply an appreciation of what is beautiful. And if I go as far as to say that it is the appreciation of external beauty, then experience of others, through extrapolation, can easily bring to dust such assertion. Then, again, what is love?

In the biblical aspect of it, love can be metaphorically or analogically pictured by the Father's sacrifice, Jesus. The latter freely accepted it. Plato in his The Symposium said that the benefit of love is courage. One is willing to die for the other, as many heroes, fiction or not, have done. I find this rather absurd. Why do you give your life for this person? Because I love him or her. What is in love that prompts anyone to do such acts? What is love?

LOVE IS A MYSTERY.