What Is Love?
Today is Valentine’s Day 2026. Symbolized by hearts and flowers, songs and chocolate and the unending ever thought provoking question, “What is love? “. The quantity of answers to this question could fit into books upon the shelves of thousands of Libraries the world over. Yet for me there is only once answer……it’s an enigma an individual must feel deeply burrowed inside the heart within the core of the body and soul.
Love has no logical explanation for its’ existence in mankind. It is fascinating how this emotion evokes so many other emotions. Joy, hurt, euphoria, devastation… all exist on the same emotional level as this enigma. To try and study its’ illusional draw is an unattainable goal bordering on the edge of the greatest discovery on earth….and that is…what is love. Simply put it is the most baffling of all studies because there is no one answer. Each human being must discover for themselves the answer to it and in which category is it applied.
Experience has shown me how, as similar as the love emotion may be felt in general, it is still just not the same for everyone. Like the snowflake has no two alike, love as it falls upon the individual core of a person and in some cases for pets as well, lands differently on each person. I have come to believe that love, like God, is just an unseen faith in the possibility of its’ existence. Choice allows us the option to either believe in it, in all its’ forms, or choose to opt out and believe it is fantasy. My choice is to believe it is the driving force within oneself to experience life completely and participate in all the positive and negatives of life it provides.
Knowing full well that choosing to love will bring me both joy and excruciating pain doesn’t stop me from feeling the power love instills within me to keep surviving in a world where hate is prevalent and misery may abound.
Some have often laughed at me or think me a fool for believing the way I do. For many Valentine’s Day is just a commercialized chosen day to make manufactures richer by hawking material items depicting the symbolism of love. I always beg to differ. To see these symbols, no matter how they come about, always remind me that love is a celebration of the good that can exist in one’s life if we choose to accept those possibilities. You don’t need to participate, you just need to acknowledge love and its powerful impact on your life.
PERSONALLY, I like Valentine’s Day and its symbols. For me it is a yearly celebration that love can connect us in a way that evokes good instead of evil. It visualizes the fact that love exists. Those images are like life support, which can recharge a dying world that is being consumed by hate and strive. Then miraculously, in just one day, love is focused upon and felt by new and old, rich and poor, healthy and unhealthy alike. So what can be wrong with that? Nothing that I can see.
Choosing to believe in love is akin to choosing between good and evil. For me, there is everything to gain from believing in the existence of love, to experience its ups and downs, feeling its’ powerful pull upon my empathetic nature and consuming me with generosity and selflessness all in one overwhelming emotion that will forever be life’s enigma. No matter the painful hurt that could accompany it, I will always choose to celebrate it, to cherish it and most of all to experience it.
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY 2026!
And that’s the way I See It, here in Jackson.
What is love?
Love is a moment, and too often it passes without a second thought. It’s the one moment in your life in which everything is right. Your faults and failures don’t matter. Love is the moment you know why you’re here; it’s the answer you’ve sought. Love is the absence of emptiness. Love is the sole reason you feel emptiness.
Love is a changeling.
It is different feelings in different people. Love is a defined human emotion tugging for comprehension within the center of reason. Love is the confidence to be. Love is essence of beauty. Love is felt. Love is neither intelligence nor a theory provoking process.
Love is the core of humanity’s beliefs.
Love can be paradise.
Love can be excruciating pain.
Love is a personal expression of inner self.
Love is a mystery waiting to be revealed.
Love is the driving force in the pursuit of happiness.
Love is self-deprivation in a quest toward selflessness of the highest form by creating happiness in another.
Love is what you feel it is and not what you think it is.
Love is unforgettably embedded in your being once it is truly experienced.
Love is a lifelong search until it’s found, felt and everlasting.
~Kathy Napoli
But love also just happens, don't you think? Whether you believe in it or not-? Love-for a creature, or a house, or a painting,, or a man, or a woman. And then, cepending on circumnstance, there are choices to make, and life can get a little too interesting for comfort.
But choosing whether to love or not, that doesn't seem possible--love shows up, then what you do with it, that;s where your choices come in. And it takes so many forms, love.
Oh, I am getting overly wound up here with my own string.. Happy Valentine's Day, Kathy!
So powerful, Kathy. It was so refreshing to read your lovely and intimate style of expression. You made Valentine’s Day come alive. And that’s from a person who long ago removed it from his calendar. Ty, again!