Love is a much debated topic. For many, love is the center and even the foundation of life. While lust and infatuation can be explained scientifically, love itself is a unique and undefined emotion. So what do we really know about love?

Love is subjective

Love is an emotion that many people have experienced, but each person feels it differently. Some experience it as butterflies in the stomach, others as a constant desire to be with the one they love, and still others as fear of loss. It cannot be defined or determined. The same rules do not apply, so there is no quiz to make it entirely clear. How do I know I am in love? Sometimes we feel it immediately, sometimes it takes a while. Others realize it only after they have lost a loved one.

Love hurts

Even this famous saying is interpreted differently by different people. It could mean that losing love hurts. It could mean that unrequited love hurts. For someone, the feeling of not understanding may itself be painful. Some say that love is not hurtful, but it is up to each of us to decide what we choose.

Love is all around us

This is also true in a way. We see love every day, but we must try to feel it. A mother comforting her child, an elderly couple holding hands, a widow placing flowers on her husband\’s grave. But most of the time we overlook love. Hate, envy, fear. But could we know love if those other emotions did not exist? Just as good cannot exist without evil, love cannot exist without hate. Just as good is born of evil and evil is born of good, so love is born of hate and hate is born of love.

True love

Some say that you only know true love once in a lifetime. Others say that this emotion is renewable and can be felt more than once, even by two different people at the same time. This is the very subjectivity that characterizes emotion. What we cannot see, what is hidden in our minds, is what we see or wish to see as we see it.