What is love?

A friend of mine recently asked me this question. This is the response I sent to him:

What is love?

I used to know the answer to this question with much more certainty that I do today. Or at least, I understood the definition of being 'in love'. When I was in love it made me know with a faith I would die for that I'd never been in love before despite how many times I'd whispered to my early infatuates over the phone. Being in love was an ecstasy that made me beautiful. It was an endorphin overload that made everything around me even more beautiful. It was like the stupid grin that stayed plastered across my face or the uncontrollable squeals of laughter that would escape my lips for no reason and no person to hear.

Being in love is being happier than you've ever imagined possible in your life. It is the overwhelming sinking heartache and panicked despair that accompanies the thought of losing that person you are so in love with. And when that intensity is replaced with a solemn curiosity, it hurts in a way that your heart knows you are going to survive. And the sadness that accompanies falling out of love just solidifies what you used to have as being real. Falling out of love is a transition into clichés and hanging onto “I love you but I'm not in love with you.” And falling out of love with a lover who also occupied your best friend and strength and security and adventure and family is more terrifying than anything you could have been prepared for. For me, it is my well calculated impulsive action of leaping from an aircraft without a parachute and praying to a God I don't understand that the ground will be soft enough to catch and not break me. It is the downward rush of the wind against my skin and my iron stomach aiming to escape through my grinning teeth because as much as it hurts, and as much as you miss him, you asked for this. So you will only cry at night.

So you ask me “what is love?”, and to this question I have no answer for you. Love is different for every circumstance for which it is created. To tell you what love is would be an attempted at pretending I know the answer. I can try to tell you what falling in and out of such a thing was like for me, but to define love itself is something I feel better left to someone else. Lucius Annaeus Seneca once described love in the following way:

“Love in its essence is spiritual fire.”