Everyday Canvas

How does one know of love?

Prompt: How do you know you love someone or something? What are the signs, feelings, thoughts, according to you?

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I think I don’t have a clue as to how I know I love someone when it comes to romantic love. To me, that happens over a good amount of time. The first sign, however, is when I start obsessing about that love. Then obsession can be a fleeting thing, too. After the obsession passes and I feel still good when I am in his company, even better than when I am with anyone else, I might start thinking that could be true love.

But then, there are many kinds of love. I just don’t trust the at-first-glance types of loves. One has to be out of her wits to call those “love”; when such a thing happened to me, once upon a time, all my alarm bells went off. One doesn’t know where such crazy feelings come from. From the malfunction of the brain or the hormones? I certainly believe, not the heart. Definitely, not the heart.

At first glance, one may like the looks or the gestures or maybe the words of a person. In further knowing or getting better acquainted with, love may develop in time...or not.

Someone once said that we only accept the love we think we deserve. There may be some truth in that. If someone comes to me out of the blue and tells me he loves me because he respects my family or likes my face or something I did, I wouldn’t trust him. I think love doesn’t happen for any one reason, but it develops over time when two people first like and then really get to know each other, but then, I also understand and accept that there are as many ways to and definitions of love as there are people.

My favorite kind of love is the love Greeks called Agápē. Agápē is the kind of love one feels for all humanity, living things, and what he or she knows of all the creation. I think I have a bit of it in me, as I feel love for all the "nasty women" and the "deplorables" alike and also, for other species, too, such as both the raptors and the helpless little birds.

I think where love is concerned, as usual, I like to revert to Shakespeare. ““Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” -from All's Well That Ends Well.