This is a profound question, one question to which I don’t yet have a definitive answer.
I know the virtues and vexes of it. I know the words that define it, the emotions that help hold it together. For the words of wiser men tell me those.
But what is love? In a pure sense.
1 John 4:16
“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them”
1 Corinthians 13:4 - 13:13
“Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious. Love does not brag, it is not puffed up. It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered, or resentful. It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes for all things, and endures all things.
Love never ends. But if there are prophecies, they will be set aside; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be set aside. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when what is perfect comes, the partial will be set aside. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways. For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, then I will know fully. Just as I have been fully known. And now these three remain: Faith, Hope, and Love. But the greatest of these is Love.”
So, I know all about love, how it is a choice, and dicision, a feeling, something you do, want, need, contain and yet outbreak in. An action, pertaining with a great desire to help somebody. It is done selflessly, but returns the greatest rewards.
This is all I know of it, having never been able to recognize it for myself.
That is my problem.