Love
The saying 'love makes the world go round' is accurate, in a metaphorical sense. Some people may disagree, saying that greed or money makes the world go round, but in order to be greedy you have to love something (or at least feel passionately about it) and the most common thing greedy people crave is money, even if it is to buy other things. Films are made about it, books and songs and poems are written, artists draw and paint and sculpt, people spend their entire lives waiting for 'The One'. You can love anything, really a person, place or thing, or maybe even the concept of love itself. But there are also different types of love. You would not love a sibling as you would love a spouse and you would not love your friend as you would love your home or faith. Dictionaries define love as basically a 'passionate feeling of affection' but love is so much more than that. Nearly every human feels love at some point in life, even if it is not their own and just directed at them. Love is not something that can really be described well by anyone, unless they are describing how much love they feel or why to someone who knows what love is. The only concept young children have of love, for example, is the love they feel for their parents They do not really understand why their parents are together, but they accept that they are because they love each other, and that is all they know.
Part of the reason why love is so difficult to define is that it is one of the most complicated feelings in the human range of emotions. I think that love is perhaps a bundle of emotions all felt at the same time and instead of trying to recite this long, and maybe even at times conflicting, list, we call this list love. The list consists of a few staple feelings but depending on the exact thing we are feeling love for, the list can differ greatly. I am not going to talk about everything one might feel as it would take far too long and be very boring to read, so I will talk about the obvious ones and move on.
Obviously, you are 'in love' with something/someone or love something because it brings you happiness (although perhaps not all the time, as I will mention later). If it is love you feel for a person, they have probably made you laugh or have had entertaining conversations with you at some point. They raise your spirits when you are with them.
Maybe even just their being with you makes you happy. My friends and family make me happy. I wouldn't spend large amounts of time with someone and trust them with my secrets and talk and laugh with them and take their advice and give them my own if they didn't make me happy.
If it isn't a person, your religion for example, you might feel happy when you sing a song of praise, when you pray, or maybe just reading your holy book. Religion brings millions of people happiness and security in knowing who they are, what is expected of them in life, how they should live, and what will happen to them when they die. They feel like a part of something on a large scale and it brings people together, the belong, which I am going to talk about next. I personally do not have a religion and so do not have all these additional feelings, and this makes me depend on my family and friends even more than I would if I had one, as I don't look to my god for guidance and help, I look to other people.
As I said, it seems to me that love inspires a feeling of belonging, like belonging in your family or with someone in a relationship or in your favourite chair or in your religious community. When you feel love, you feel complete. The other person in a relationship might 'make you feel whole', your love of your god might fill a hole in your life (or 'heal' you if you perhaps suffered abuse or great sadness at some point), or maybe being with a friend who you trust and have a good time with does the same thing. I know that if I didn't have my friends, I would be much unhappier. Some people don't really value their friends much but if I didn't have friends, who would I gossip with for 15 minutes at break or walk to the shop with for lunch or walk home with? Who would I discuss music and films with? Who would help me decide what to wear and who would comfort me when something bad happened? I can't imagine not having someone there for me or even not being there for someone else.
