What is Love? (baby don't hurt me)

Today I was told that love is the most overused four letter word in the English language.
I love cheese.
I love sleeping in.
I love spending time with you.

Love is more than something you enjoy doing, more than a preference.
But what is love?
Can you claim love when you've claimed it dozens of times before? Can you claim it when you cannot define it, can't explain what it means when you say it?

Can you claim it at all? Does it even exist?

I'm scared of love. Not of loving someone, but of not knowing for sure what love is. I feel I have a definite hold on it... then a family member, boy, friend will throw something into the mix that I hadn't previously considered.
If I cannot define love, does it exist? Is it more than a feeling? Is what you experience and call love different with every person you experience it with?

If so, who has decided to make love this all-encompassing, all-inclusive term.
Let me tell you what I know and believe about love, starting with:

Universal Truth Number Thirty Three
Love is treated too lightly

That's not to say that we take love too lightly when we show it for our fellow man. Just that we should recognize that it's kindness and compassion we're showing. Not love.


Love is the glue that holds you to your family, and endears your family to you, when nothing else does.
Love is the power that makes good friends, great. Because, when you love someone, you put their needs before your own.

More than that, being IN love is a combination of chemistry and electricity between two people who love each other like they love both their family and their best friends. Nothing less.

Love isn't the attraction or butterflies that describe lust.
Love isn't the connection between two teenagers who hold hands in the halls of the local high school.
Love isn't what you feel when you kiss someone, or are kissed.
Love is more than just caring about someone, or wanting to have someone in your life.

Love is more than that. And all of that.

It's running to kill the spider when she's standing on the couch.
It's moving plans around so you can spend the afternoon with him.
It's doing something inconvenient, and doing it willingly; because she has plans but still wants to road-trip with you, because he has to get packed within the hour, because this was something that she or he had always wanted.

Being in love with someone means that you would walk through hell itself, if it meant keeping that person beside you. Anyone thinking less is kidding themselves.

Love is more than just a strong regard or feeling. It's a set of feeling that are so overwhelming you worry if any one person should be allowed to feel all of this happiness, this excitement, this peace and contentment all at once.
And you worry because as much as you thought you couldn't love that person more, you wake up the next day to find yourself proven entirely wrong.

THAT is love. That's part of what it means to be in love.
I can't define it. Can't describe it any better.

But you'd better believe I can tell the world at large they're using the word too often. And that they're using it wrong.
Love means something. Unless you're willing to imply all of the above when you say, "I love you," think twice before those three words escape your lips.