What Is It About Love?

If one wishes to know love, one must live love, in action. Leo Buscaglia

We are all born from Gods' love - we die with Gods' love and we do all we can do to find love in between our birth and our death. Searching, seeking and longing for that true love... we were created to LOVE...

What is it about LOVE and why is it so hard to find?

I'm certain there are thousands upon thousands of stories written on the subject of ecstasy and longing. Music galore about rising in love or falling out of love and many sonnets written about the heart connection.

We find love, we spend time with love, and know this must be LOVE, and then we do all we can to sabotage love, and walk away from it, in order to go find a more suitable love, for we think the grass is greener on the other side.

I really don't get it - Do you?

Is love an emotion, a feeling, a verb or noun? The road to love can be long or not so long, can be lovely, can be adventurous, can be filled with joy or pain, can be a multitude of things. I looked up the definition of love and this is what I found. Love is a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. When I Googled, "What is it about love," I found: QUIZ: Is it Love? WOW - now you can take a quiz to make sure it's love! (I'm not sure if I want to do that).....

Scientists say that the brain chemistry of infatuation is akin to mental illness - which gives new meaning to "madly in love."

Love is about how the other person makes you feel. The fact of the matter is that love involves non-verbal reactions - synaptic (chemical) connections within our brains. Since I love to research, I did some research on LOVE.

I discovered that the species that stick to one mate usually have a rich flow of another chemical called vasopressin, the "monogamy" chemical. Experiments done with males injected with this chemical brought out all the evidence needed. Isolating males before and after mating, he was indifferent to all females. But 24 hours after mating, he is hooked for life. The jealous husband syndrome sets in too.

Another chemical is oxytocin, the "cuddling" chemical. It promotes the need to be physically held, have close contact with the mater, and makes the sexes more caring. It can be released simply by a lover's look, smell or even a fantasy.

When infatuation subsides, another chemical takes over which is responsible for intimate relationships, these chemicals are created by endorphins. They make a relationship steadier, intimate, dependable, warm and a great sharing experience. They do not induce a giddy high, but calmness and stability....hence the reason why people stay married. This chemical is addictive so the longer a couple stays married, the longer two people stay together. It is endorphins that trigger grief on a spouse's death or long separation, those yearnings for togetherness. Adrenaline love is being in love with the idea of being in love. With endorphin love, we like loving someone.

There are foods that can intensify love.....

We eat aphrodisiacs (named after the Greek Goddess of Love - Aphrodite) to enhance love: chocolate, oysters, turtle eggs eaten raw with salt and lime (haven't tried this one yet); asparagus, almonds, avocado, bananas, basil, figs, garlic and honey. It was suggested by a very "special man" in my life - "Why not prepare a dinner to include each of these foods?"

Now that we know about the chemicals and foods involved in the "love" process:

What is it about love and the longing to have it in our lives?

There are so many dating sites to meet the "ONE" but yet we are lonelier and lonelier as a society. Here are a few statistics from Match.com: People over age 50 makes up Match.com's fastest growing segment of users, with a 300% increase since 2000.

WHAT is that all about?

Is it because our biological clocks of younger years is ticking away and we wake up one day with more wrinkles and the reality that we are not getting any younger and no one to share our golden years with.....

I WANT A PARTNER/MATE NOW SYNDROME?

75% of women and 81% of men in their 50s experience a serious, exclusive relationship after a divorce. (this to me is great news)

There really are a lot of fish in the sea: According to the Census Bureau, 29% of adults age 45-59 are now single, compared with only 19% in 1980.

I listen to so many single women and I hear, "Where are the men?" I listen to so many single men and they say, "Where are the women?" They must "NOT" be out there since I'm hearing the same thing from both sexes; or are they and the real reason we haven't found the ONE for us is because we have been so busy in dating so many men and men women, that it's been a distraction in truly discovering ourselves out and working on US? I read in Don Miguel Ruiz book, The Mastery of Love that we must be 100% complete in ourselves in order to attract that perfect one for you. Once you accept yourself just the way you are, the next step is to accept your partner.

It makes sense to me, does it you?

If you have the eyes of love, you just see love wherever you are, even in the imperfect - Wabi Sabi. When you perceive with the eyes of love, you can connect your will with the will of another dreamer, and the dream becomes ONE. Then you can see with the eyes of an eagle or transform into any kind of life. With your love you connect with the eagle and you become the wings. But to do this, you need to clean the mind of fear and perceive with the eyes of love. If you can open your heart completely to your partner, you can reach heaven through your love.

When we fulfill the needs of our mind and our body, our eyes see with love. We see God everywhere. I love what Don Miguel Ruiz says, "But when we know that our heart is a magical kitchen, we are always generous, and our love is completely unconditional." I love the anology of our heart being a magical kitchen.....

I believe we have this "Jerry McGuire" notion of love in the famous line from the movie where Tom Cruise tells Renee Zellweger, "You complete me." Are you kidding me - why did they not edit that line from the movie? Hey, it's Hollywood and they can say anything to make us say, "AWWWWWHHHHHH - why doesn't anyone say that to me????" So we look for someone that can say to us, "You complete me." I believe a better term may be - "You compliment me."....... It truly is a beautiful gift to us when we compliment and not complete. I much rather use the term from the movie, "As Good As It Gets" where Jack Nicholson tells Helen Hunt, "you make me want to be a better man."

Once we awaken to self and clean up our houses (our temples -mind and body), then the awakening is like being at a party where there are hundreds of people and everyone is drunk except you. You are the only sober person at the party. Most humans see the world through their emotional wounds, through their emotional poison. Here lies the problem of not being awake and aware.

When in the awakened state, your heart is an expression of the Spirit, an expression of Love, an expression of Life. It's being aware that you are Life. When you are aware that you are the force that is Life, anything is possible.

Miracles happen all the time, because those miracles are performed by the heart. The heart is in communion with the human soul, and when the heart speaks even with the resistance of the mind, something inside you changes; your heart opens another heart, and TRUE LOVE is possible. It's in opening another's heart there lies the chemicals, the passion, the Love that we are ALL either trying to find or keep.

My girlfriend Giovanna stated it so eloquently to me this past week, "almost all relationships start with what can I "get" from it rather then what can I "bring" to it; I believe that we have to be selfless and selfishness abounds us these days....the other part is to choose wisely. We tend to choose what is familiar to us whether it feels good or not because it is what we know...we change it by our thoughts about ourselves, our actions and constant vigilance of those thoughts.....BELIEVE IN YOURSELF!

WE MUST FEEL WORTHY OF LOVE FOR LOVE TO COME...

Love enables you to stand for yourself in an honorable and gracious way; with no hidden agendas; with no room for negativity. In its purest form - UNCONDITIONAL! My friend Jimmy has a website Life Architects and stated it this way on my guest blogger Angie's comments on, "Only Time Can Reveal If It's Real": "true love is attached to us with invisible ties. These ties connect our spirits and souls that only we can understand."

For the MAGIC of love and the volumes written and sung about it; it continues to afflict us generation after generation.

So the bottom line in all this LOVE talk is we are put on this earth to experience LOVE in its purest form - to get closer to our GOD for HIS love is unconditional - and in so doing we discover that HE is LOVE, LIGHT and TRUTH - all the things that we search for in a lifetime are all wrapped up in our Divine. We crave all these things in human form - so it is in acquiring the eyes of GOD and having your eyes fixed on HIM, then this should make the love process easier to find and keep, for love never fails...

Where there is GREAT LOVE, there are GREAT MIRACLES...

L'amore vince tutto (Love conquers all).... (Italian)

I invite you to share your thoughts on this?

Remember, may the possibilities of today excite us all!

Eleanor Roosevelt stated, "the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

My dream has been to encourage and empower women. My passion to inspire through words of love and understanding. Makegirlfriends.com has been created for women to meet.share and inspire one another. We put so much emphasis on sites where men meet women but I found in life that my girlfriends have been there for me through life's challenges. The importance of great friends is what inspired me to create http://www.makegirlfriends.com/

Be part of the inspiration and part of this adventure we call life!