What the hell is love, anyway?
It's not a new question, it's been pondered over by many people for a long time, and the problem isn't that they can't come up with a meaning. It's that they've come up with way too many. "Love" means, alternately: Close friendship, a familial bond, romantic attraction, sex, general niceness to everyone, really enjoying a particular food, and I'm sure there are a hundred more. The word is useless to the language. Not just useless, but downright dangerous.
Even if we give it the context of a romantic relationship, it still covers just about every type of attraction, depending on who's saying it. Some people will tell you you can only have love if you've been in a relationship for a long time, others believe in love at first sight. Some will say that to find out if something is love or not, you've got to let your heart tell you. Obviously my heart pumps blood and doesn't do much talking, but that idiom, as far as I can decipher it, refers to letting your feelings override logical thought. Well, when it comes down to definitions of words, I think we can agree that they are a matter of the "brain", not the "heart."
Now let me back up and explain why this word is such a problem. There are many words in our language with multiple meanings. For instance, "You're back" means "You have returned" whereas "Your Back!" means (probably) "There is something wrong with or weird about your back." The difference between this and the love issue is that the confusion can easily be cleared up. Observe this example.
Person A: You're Back!
Person B: Yes, I know, but the doctor says it's only temporary and I'll be fine if I don't do heavy lifting.
Person A: No, I meant I was happy that you returned.
Person B: oh.
Now this counterexample:
Person A: I love you!
Person B: Now, when you say "love" are you referring to romantic love, agape love, love for a food product...
That can really kill a moment. The word love is often used in very emotional moments, and to break up those moments for a clarification of definitions can make one seem unemotional or uncaring. But when one just guesses, if one guesses wrong it could cause some trouble. Someone might love you as a friend, but you think they love you romantically. Or a girl might say "I love Brad Pitt" meaning she is infatuated by him, but someone whose definition of romantic love necessarily involves actually meeting a person might fall under the impression that she actually knew Brad Pitt. Such a person might feel the need to warn Jennifer Anniston. My point is that the word love needs to be eliminated from the language. It's far too broad and easy to misinterpret for a word with such prominent standing in the language.
Obviously, this will never happen. But I am urging everyone to stop using this word unless you absolutely need it. Except that I'm not, because that doesn't work either. The minute you stop using the word love, everyone thinks you don't love them, and then they get all mad at you. So I'm urging you to, um, to. Y'know, I don't know how to solve this problem. But it definitely needs to be solved somehow! Or maybe it doesn't.
