How Do You Know You're In Love?

I quote a close Sociology classmate of mine who wrote this question down in her blog:

But one thing puzzles me greatly…if you never know what love is, how will you know you are in love?

Taking a quick glance through her other posts, I left that question at the corner of my mind as food for thought. It seemed like a pretty harmless question, something that comes up in our minds once in a while when we ponder about relationships.

Then it hit me. You don't have to know what love is to know you're in love! Brilliant huh. Totally copied the idea from the Sociology of Religion module we took together last semester: You don't have to be able to define religion to know what religion is, and how it works in society. Same goes for love. All of us have experienced love before, but we can't really pinpoint what it is. Yes, there are a million songs and movies, books and thesis on love; countless commercial products promoting "love as it is"; famous gurus explaining the mysteries of love to thousands of lost souls hoping to get a idea of the love they find themselves craving so much.

Well God knew that this question is bound to plague the minds of this world, from the greatest to the simplest, so He decided to be really nice (as He always is, eventually) and tell us the answer directly. HE is love. No, God is not the GOD of love. HE is love itself. There is no god of love. Cupid is a flawed conception and cannot exist simply because one day Cupid will have to fall in love himself to even come to terms with the sacrifice required of the responsibility "bestowed" to him. And like all of us, he's going to maim himself if he plunges his own arrow into his heart.

So any attempt to define what love is results in the constraint of trying to describe God. Be it with language, art, music, architecture, it is not going to be possible to be successful. We can continue to try, but we're only going to be able to show so much. And some attempts, admittedly, come close to hitting the bulls eye of our hearts. Ever cried when you watched a Korean/Japanese romance series or listened to the lyrics of a love song? Ever teared when you saw Jordan shoot in the winning basket of the final game in the NBA series or Gerrard finally lifting the Champions League trophy? Ever gasped in amazement at the view of the Great Wall from the moon or the Taj Mahal from the sky? Ever felt the strings of your heart tugging to the love theme from Tchaikowsky's "Romeo & Juliet" or the flush on your face to the piano melody from Kevin Kern's "Sundial Dreams"? How much more there is in store for us in heaven when we get there?

To the friend who posed this question, my belief is this. We know when we're in love, even without being able to define what love is, simply because love is first of all indescribable (though its awesome beauty propels, no, compels us to constantly describe it with our limited capacities), and secondly, because we were just made by the Creator to love and be loved. Thus being the fact, it also follows that we will recognize love when we feel it within us. We will just know.

The greatest thing on Earth and in Heaven is to love and be loved.