This is Day 14 of the 21-Day Journaling Challenge held in Nov 2011. The challenge is now over but you can do the tasks in your own time. Visit the overview page for all the challenge tasks.
Hi everyone – Welcome to Day 14 of 21DJC! :) Yesterday’s question was: “What Do You Fear Most?“. (Read the responses.)What do I fear the most? One of my 5 core values (We will work on uncovering our values next month, during Day 15 of Live a Better Life in 30 Days) is “Courage”. The reason why I picked Courage as my core value, is because I think living in fear is one of the worst ways to live life.Why do I say that? Because fear is the mind killer. When you live in fear or something, you start living in a box, whereby the boundary of the box is defined by your fear. The thing is, this fear, if not linked to any physical danger, is merely an illusion that limits your life experience. You may think you are safe by having your life governed by this fear, and you may theoretically feel safe, but the truth is you are repressing yourself for no real reason. Read: Why Overcome Fear?Because fear is such a pointless, disempowering emotion, I make a conscious effort to unroot my fears whenever I face one. I first get clarity on what I’m fearful about, after I seek to understand them. Then, I work on dissolving the fear itself.That said, there are definitely things I’m fearful of, that I’ve not worked through. I’d say working through our fears is a life long journey. For every layer of fear I unravel, there will be new layers of fear underneath. These reflect the new phases of growth I’ve to to through. Personally, I see fears as indicators of what I need to work on next, so it’s a great compass for my growth.The current fears I’m dealing with include fear that I’m not good enough, fear that I’ll be all alone, fear that no one loves me, fear that I cannot lose weight, fear that I’m too ugly, fear that I’ll never be loved. These are things which I look forward to writing and sharing in detail at Personal Excellence in the upcoming future, as I work through the issues.I want to take this chance to thank all of you for earnestly sharing your fears here.With PE, I strive to create a safe space where all of us can share our thoughts and pursue our growth without judgment or prejudice. As I look at the community we have right now, I feel that we *are* living this at this moment. This is incredible. I was just having a conversation with one of the regular PE members, Matt, earlier this week, and we both agreed that PE is easily the most conscious communities either of us have seen online. I can’t be prouder of all of us here.Thank you for being a part of Personal Excellence. I’m very grateful for your existence.With that said, let’s now move to today’s question!

21DJC Day 14
Today’s question is:What Is Love?
Your Task Today:
- Reflect and answer today’s question. There’s no word limit – whether minimum or maximum. Write as few or as many words as you want. It’s all up to what you want to express!
- Share your answer. After you are done writing, copy and paste your answer in the comments area and post it there.
- Check out other participants’ answers. Other participants will be sharing their answers too, so feel free to read and reply to their answers. This is a group course, so let’s support each other in these 21 days.
Look forward to reading your answers! :D
((Images: Empty book for journaling, Red heart))
What does love mean to me?
A good question, and to be honest a difficult one to answer.
Love to me would mean many things. In a broad sense it would mean an understanding and respect for all living creatures within this universe. From the tiniest insects to those closest to me. Infinite love for one another and every species so we can all live in harmony. Love to me is about caring for one another, or showing others that we can all live even more fulfilled lives by showing as much love for all.
Of course it’s also natural to show more love towards those closest to us, as they’re the ones we care about most. But never forgetting others.
Showing love towards another species for me can many times be a lot simpler for me than love for other humans. For example cows in dairy farms who have never caused anyone any harm, and yet are beaten, poked daily, living a life of fear before becoming part of a hamburer patty or sausage. How could I ever show any less love for those cows than the humans who enslave them? But do those enslavers not deserve to be loved also? I believe they do, for it’s clearly a lack of love in their lives that has made them so evil and sadistic. Without love, it becomes a lot simpler for one to become greedy and materialistic. Sadly in many cases at the expense of others.
So love to me is essentially the key to peace and harmony for all within this universe. Living together without fear, greed or hated towards one another.
What is Love?
Love is the greatest gift given to us! Love is the link to God, to my highest self!
Love is the most pure and true manifestation of my spirit! Love is the unseen bond between all beings of universe and me. I feel love when I am feeling my heart pumping faster and my spirit alleviating. After that, I feel a pinch in my chest and my breath is taken away for a moment.
Love is when I feel everything is in the right place. Love is when I feel the presence of Greatness in everything that my sight could catch or not. Love is when I give my best to the other one not taking anything in return. Love is the driver of the world,
It is really hard to describe love in words because Love is an Emotion which can be expressed through sharing and caring. Love is a feeling inside us which we spread / express to the one whom we get emotionally attached with. True love is always unconditional.
To me, Love is a divine force, to me love means caring for someone unconditionally and deeply from heart. To me love means “I CARE” attitude for someone I’m emotionally attached with. :)
The first that comes to mind is a bible tekst about love. I’ll try to find it online…
It´s 1 Corinthians 13: 1-13, but especially 4-8:
‘4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[b] 6it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8Love never ends…’
I’ve always felt that that expresses the feeling of love so well
(I have to say, that I think it sounds more poetic in my native language)
Love is a warm feeling, it’s a certain softness I can feel in my eyes, a fuzzy feeling in my stomach. It’s when someone or something touches me, moves me.
haha well when I started spilling my thoughts out the first time it turned into and ugly mess of things so i’m going to try again with another approach. sweet and simple:) Love is anything and everything that creates a good, better, beautiful, happy, fun, exciting, romantic, peaceful, or growing experience for anyone or anything that is willing and that’s not at the cost of another’s experience. Love is the expansion of experience at no cost where as evil is the expansion of experience at all cost and then theres everything in-between because I’ve never felt more in love with life then when I discovered how easily I could loose it. i’ve never felt more in love then when i had already had my heart broken. I had never been happier than after I had been sad. it all keeps coming back to this point for me. it is always coldest before the dawn:) Love is the strength to wait for the dawn, the jacket to keep us warm while where waiting and the light to lead the way. and the beautiful thing is that those all those fairy tale disney love stories with happy endings can be true if you want them to be;) but nothing is given to you so you have to work at it and earn it! ;) Cheers! and don’t forget to have a good day because there’s always sunshine, music and margaritas somewhere:))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Just to clarify the beginning of my previous comment “love is postivity,” i mean to say that when you love something or someone , you look at only the good side. you are not bothered about what you dont like. your focus is always on the “good”.. Love then drives into more positive things like creativity, courage, generosity etc.. so i guess that’s why people say “LOVE IS ALL” :-)
Love is POSITIVITY.. I love my parents and my brothers and will do anything for them. nothing is too big too achieve or sacrifice for them..
On the darker side , as in the case of a romantic relationship, especially a failed one , Love is like poison.. It slowly kills you. Its death in disguise.
Lucky are those whose first love lasted for ever. That romance, the hope that you are always looking forward to a future with the one no matter what, knowing that he will always be there for you, to share the most beautiful dreams and the deepest despair, to sit together and watch the sunset without having spoken a single word and yet feel like you had the best conversation in the world.. that’s love for me ..
For the rest like me , its the most painful thing in the world. Now i know what love ISN’T.. but i don’t know if i will ever get to know what love actually is ..
Have read and heard a lot about love, but when it actually happens to you, its the biggest risk you will be taking in your life because, either you will get to live a life so wonderful and exciting like never before, or it could break you heart into pieces, making you feel frustrated, sad, angry and confused more than anything else, taking the faith away from something you believed based on what others have said about love..
That’s the lesson i learned. You decide what love is for you.. You decide what “package” love comes in. . you decide if love is unconditional or not… you decide if love is about “give and take”,
you decide is love is self-sacrificing or not.. its all based on what you think .. not what your friends, the books or the movies say about it..
Love, by definition is so loaded a question, that it is virtually impossible to answer. And, there are so many levels of love. I love money but my kids can’t be bought at any price. I strive to be as loving as possible while also loving myself as well. I even love you (who’s ever reading this) though we’ve never met because I’m a loving person! Love, Brian
Love, to me, is absolute. Yes, it takes a lot of hard work, but just like we all mess up and need forgiveness, we need to be able to extend that to others. I have never been in love with a man, but I need to know how to treat others with love before I can give so much of myself to one person. My knowledge of love and how it is acted out might change when I reach that point, but for now I try to be as open and honest with people as I can. If this even all makes sense written out haha.
What does Love mean to me?
“Love can be anything, can’t nothin’ but Love be Love” – the Temptations
Love is a Transcendent Force. Love is a State of Being.
When you feel love you know it.
God is Love.
I do not think there are enough words to describe it to someone that does not know what it is.
Love is all there is, Love is all there is…. – The Beatles
One thing it means to me a sense of acceptance, and peace.
For me, Love is not a feeling. It is something I choose. Therefore it means something that I have chosen to commit myself to.
It’s nice how you included the phrase “to you” in the question, it makes a difference while answering (for me) :)
I don’t know much about love, only that it’s pure and that it’s from and to our God.
I believe the saying “Absence is to love as wind is to fire; It extinguishes the small and kindles the great.”
I think love is our driving force. It is the love we have for others, for the things we do and for ourselves what makes us get up every morning and do the best we can. Without love we are nothing, we need to love what we do, we need to love ourselves, we need to feel that we are loved, we need to give love. That is just the way we are and if there is no love for anything in your life, you are not living.
To me, love is the absence of hate. The term love is used to describe joy at deeply enjoying a favourite meal or watching a favourite director/actor on the screen or reading a favourite author. Something you profoundly embrace and enjoy, not shun and avoid. Love in the romantic sense is such a small, but important, aspect of the whole emotion of love. But all of this is academic and understood. But the term love should be used always with earnest, after thought, not for any passing matter. What gets to me is how I see the term hate being used so easily, when the term “hate” also has deep and lasting connotations that get glossed over. The same thing needs to be said for love when one says “I love you” but really does not mean it, it really should not be said. The same with “thank you.” (I pause before I say “thank you” to reflect on the words and appreciate the situation and share that delivery with the person I am talking/writing/etc.) When I use words like “I love this” or “I love you” I pause each time I say that and reflect on the meaning of the word since I find those words have such deep and lasting meeting because they are the top of their class of emotion. The same thing goes for “I hate this, you, etc.” because that sends the message that there is the total and complete absence of anything good or loving or special in that item or person. Love is to be used with meaning as it represents a strong emotion, a deep devotion, unselfish concern. Although love comes from within, as an emotion, love is best enhanced by learning from interactions around oneself. Self-love is essential for living the optimal life. If one does not love oneself one cannot project that emotion onto the world around them, and that would indeed be a sad affair. No affection, no devotion, no enthusiasm, no attraction. Love is that ‘gift that gives on giving’ (to overuse an often-used phrase.) To be able to experience this emotion and then use my other gifts to share this emotion, be it with my gift of speaking (to say it), gift of touch (to give a hug or kiss or write it in a letter/email), gift of living (to spend time with things and people I deeply care about), is a great experience. I feel deeply sad for those people whose lives are filled with hate. I do not understand that emotion since I do not think I possess it. When I interact with people filled with hate, I cannot hate them myself, but I do wish I understood their approach better to allow me to interact with them and share my emotions.
Love to me is this gorgeous Sunday morning, bathing my 5 year old and fixing her hair while she sang. My 9 year old laughing and playing before they left for church a few moments ago. I firmly believe there is no love as pure as the one a mother feels for her child. Love to me is lounging around on the river banks in the summer, tanning with my best friend while my two daughters splash around in the water. Love to me is when I feel insecure, my boyfriend holding me without asking why I’m sad. Silence can sometimes say everything. Love is holding my Granny’s hand when she was sick and passing away and knowing deep inside that I would gladly take her place and knowing deep inside she would never let me if given the choice.
Love is a feeling I have toward other’s when I long for their happiness above anything else. Love has a way of calming me and it’s a happy, peaceful feeling. Love is a feeling I have inside as I enjoy a wonderful life experience and everything seems right in that moment.
The word love can be used by humans but their actions prove different. I would prefer to never be told I am loved, only to be shown different. I don’t have a desire to hear the words. I have a desire to feel the words.
My love runs deep for the few I keep close to me. My love is wrapped up in my family and my surroundings. I feel waves of love as I look at the gorgeous mountains surrounding me. I also feel love when my dog snuggles up beside me and sleeps with his head on my hair. My dog can’t say, “I love you”. He shows it. If he bit me, he would be showing something different. I think people should be more like that. Less worried about saying the words and more concerned with showing them.
Love is unconditional. It is exquisite. It is empowering, compassionate, and nurturing. It is extremely powerful. It is enchanting and mysterious. It doesn’t ask for anything in return. It can melt and break hearts. Without love, there is no strength. Without love, there is no beauty.
To me, love means accepting people as they are, not trying to change them into who you think they should be. Unconditional acceptance without judgment. Knowing when to hang on and when to let go. Unconditional respect without judgment. If understanding is not possible, having a true yearning to understand. Seeing someone’s eyes light up when they see you or vice versa. A safe place to rest your head.
Love, for me is a sense of belonging. It is the idea of being able to belong to someone, to call someone my own and caring for them before caring for my own self. It is sacrificing my happiness, time and resources for someone else and feeling great joy and comfort in that. It is joyfully yielding to someone’s request, without any anger or remorse. It is putting myself in harms way for another, without thinking about it for a second. It is about a sacrifice.
This reminds me off one of my favorite passages from 1 Cornithians
1 Corinthians 13
1 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
And Romans 5:8
8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
“Love” has always been an extremely rough emotion for me. I disliked using the word, or just expressing that i care to another person. It has been changing for a bit now. However, i am still very uncomfortable around it. It is just a powerful emotion, it can change people, move them, drive them to do insane things or great things….or insane and great things. I think i am afraid of it…..so i dont express it well at all….i often fall in the trap of just wanting to achieve others’ love by pleasing them, or buying it with gifts or toys etc. I believe love is more than that. Love is making the right decision at the right time. It is about caring for others enough to make them dislike you, but still make the right decision for them. It is about being faithful long after everyone else has abandoned the cause. It is about sustaining ridicule and isolation and facing your deepest fears, all for the right cause. It is not about physical infatuation, but an attraction to the spirit, to the mind and heart and soul. It is about the willingness to undergo extreme trials and tribulations and hardships…for a better tomorrow.
What does love really mean to you?
The question arises from my soul today
What does love really mean to you
How do you see it impacting your life
Is it something on your list of things to do
I pondered a while, while pacing around
What does this word really imply
Is it just another one of those fancy rules
With which i have to comply
“Love your neighbor as yourself
Love is gentle, love is kind”
I hear em all and think understand them
How do i follow them with my heart and mind?
Love to me is the sense of belonging
Of wanting to give more, than wanting to take
Desiring to endanger your self for others
Not about the advantages you rake
Love might be when one feels secure
To bare his darkest secrets to the other
The act of one standing by his friends
In rough times, when the road meets the rubber
Love has great power to change the heart
It can cause revolutions in all folks
Makes happy people all sad and serious
And the sober guy crack jokes
Love is the emotion the world yearns for
Striving all the time for that warm feeling inside
Let it be the coolest hardest guy in the shop
This is something he wont hide
It is about seeing love in small things
The casual conversation, the moment of grace
All i know is that true love
Brings pure joy, and a smile on my face
Thanks Taffi, for putting up that passage. I recently read passage 8, and I found it profound. I’ve just added your passage to my little diary, where I keep all my favorite motivational and inspiring quotes.
Passage 8?
I think Anu is pointing to the the last Phrase of your entry.
For me love is unconditional acceptance and respect others as who they are, no matter what. I could identify I’m in love when I do things mindfully, with purpose that I’m doing this for somebody, whether that person is aware of or not. I like to be loved so if i’m loved by anybody, I could do anything to live up to the love. :)
How parents love their children, how siblings care for each other, how your pet sleeps beside you and never wants you to leave the house. Then there is romantic love, love between partners, they care about each other, they comfort the one that is not feeling fine, they don’t judge, they would do anything to stay together.
Love to me is like a synonym for care and understanding…
Love is where no lies exist…..the faces of the two should have a spring water like clarity
Love is where no need for unnecessary pushing and fussing exists
Love is when you don’t expect from the person but understand what he/she does to you….if you hold on to expectations that this person would do this and that for you, you aren’t loving him/her but are just attracted towards the lofty needs of your ego….
Love is the ability of knowing at the back of your mind, when the whole world pushes you against the wall, that someone would be to rightfully tug you on
Love isn’t just tethered to your spouse….it flows to your kids, your devotion and religion, your friends, your home, your comfort zone…….even to the nature so beautiful that makes you cry…….
Love for me is a force. Love is that which helps you move past fear, that which heals, it’s what keeps you going when you want to give up, which reveals who you truly are at a soul level.
Love is what brings people closer together, what sets us free; I honestly believe love is God.
I would describe it as freedom, joy, courage, strenght, faith, caring.
love is life
Love is motivation, love is the secret beneath our creation, relations, happiness and sometimes sadness.
love is power, love in positive energy which make u build live and enjoy life.
Love is when your soul flies in the sky while your feet are on the ground.
Love is warm feeling in cold days. Love is a big hug when u cry. Love is hope and new year wishes. Love is dream make hard life goes. love is like breathing fresh air, make u feel alive again.
Beautiful
I totally agree.
Love to me is when you know that your not perfect and you don’t expect perfection from others. First you have to love yourself to love others. Loving others the way you love yourself. Sometimes I try to put myself in the other persons shoes and see myself through there eyes. To see if the way I am acting is inappropriate. I noticed recently when someone said something kinda offensive to me I reacted not so good. After I saw how I acted in there eyes I will try my best to just not let silly things get to me. When you don’t expect perfection from others then that is love. Overlooking offensive things.
Seeing all of someones good qualities as oppose to thinking about all there bad qualities.
This is general love in my opinion.
Love with a spouse They go above and beyond for you and you do the same for them. You see all there good qualities and never there bad ones. Even though there perfect in your eyes when they make mistakes you overlook it as if it didn’t happen. Love is blind there is a reason for that saying. If someone we love does something bad we put it out of our mind. The reason we put it out of our mind is because we don’t won’t to believe it. Loving is believing things will be different next time around. When there next to you your heart beats real fast. You get butterflies and you find them irresistable.
This is the first time I read all the comments before posting. So this smile on my face? That’s love. To get to know you and your deepest thoughts. Beautiful people with beautiful souls, thank you :)
I had love in my life, much more than I deserved, at some point. Unconditional love, from my parents and my best friend. From God. I took it all for granted. I thought I loved them back, but there was always a hidden purpose, to fulfill my needs or to feed my ego.
When I was 16, I fell in love and I thought “ok, now I know what love is”. But I was just a silly teenager, who projected all the childhood fairytales onto a man. Obviously he wasn’t a prince and the innocence turned into jealosy and the need to control him, till I basically ended up stalking him. It took him a while, but enough was enough and we broke up. That’s when I completely screwed up my life. I wanted to die. I quit school, abandoned everyone and everything. My parents were devastated when they found out I didn’t attend my exams. But they stood by me, didn’t kick me out, didn’t punish me.
At 21, another man came into my life and the history repeated. You’d think I learned from my mistakes, but before I even realized it, I was following the same sick pattern. It took me years to be aware of my mistakes. I was subconsciously underming my chances to be happy, because I didn’t think I was worthy of love. So I decided to get to know me better, to find the goodness in me and fight the dark sides… I’ve dedicated my whole time to my personal growth and putting myself back together. It’s a long journey, but I feel ready for it, because I’ve accepted myself and I’m at peace with the past.
I know that true love brings out the good in people. True love is constantly growing together, helping each other, working together towards a higher meaning. True love brings balance, harmony, peace. True love makes you want to be a better person and helpes you become that person. And it all comes naturally.
I think the purpose of life is being happy and the only way to happy is to be surrounded by love. Love from and to everything that surround you, a very big good sweet emotion that fills you with good positive energy and makes you want to go on. Love what you have, love what you want, love to live, and remove everything that steps you back from it. :)
What words or phrases would you use to describe love?
Love is an emotion that makes me and others happy. It’s a feeling that comes by time after I get to know and appreciate others for who they really are and viceversa. I love to feel love even when I feel I’m just an annoyance to the world or that nobody loves me. Sometimes I wonder if anybody would ever accept me for who I am or if I even know who I am but love is truly the basis of everything that is special and helps us move on into a better world.
How do you identify if you are feeling the emotion of love, or something else?
When I feel love there’s this gentle peace lingering my heart but with a sense of fear of the time this love would fade by time, when I am not feeling love there is nothing, it’s just a normal every day scenario.
What does the word ‘love’ mean to you?
It means to accept others and be accepted for who one really are. It means to stay and stick with somebody in the bad and the good, it’s to give without wanting and spend quality time together. Hugs express love as much as cleaning somebody’s tears off their face. Love is making a silly random joke to put a smile on another person when everything feels like it will end, love is when you give it all up for another and love is when you feel loved and love in return. :heart:
Nice thoughts! Aptly put. :clap:
No other words in this universe could describe what love is…it can always be felt by the heart…simply says,
LOVE is the fuel that runs this universe for centuries!..its infinity. ;)
Love is commitment, trust, affection between people.
Same apply to 2 lovers, as long as they love each other, they will overcome anything…
When do you feel love? where there’s full happiness and again trust and communication plays an important role.
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