What is love?

"What is love? If I knew, then I wouldn't be alone now, would I?" -- Anonymous There is no better time than today (except, maybe, tomorrow -- silly me) to pose this ever-so-baduy rhetoric we ask in moments of profound cheesiness. But who would even dare provide us with answers, aside from the victims of slumbook-toting teens on the verge of puberty? "That's a corny question to answer," declares a colleague. Another deadpans "Ewan ko." Love Means Never Having To Say You're Corny Perhaps it's not that we are utterly grossed out by the prospect of answering this fairly straightforward question so we choose to laugh it off and file it under our list of "Corny Questions Never To Be Answered." On the contrary, dear love muffins, we probably don't know how to sufficiently answer this question. Plus, no two people have the exact same response. As that immortal bard went, "Love is a many splendored thing." That illustrates the fact that we can just pin it down for the three count. "Love is my husband," smiles a pal, while her eyes twinkle. Sheesh, and all this time I kept calling him Romel. Another defines it thus: "Love is sleeping with my doggies, especially Greta and Yuri. My small doggies don't hog the bed and don't get mad if I accidentally kick them at night. Best of all, they always, always wake up on the right side of the bed and greet me with wagging tails." She also brags that these pets of hers never wet the bed. I guess that shows they love her back (my friend is toilet-trained herself, by the way). Love Is Dumb Of course, there are many types of love, each with its own array of "symptoms." For our purposes, however, we will limit this discussion to romantic love. Romantic love is a most curious thing because it often strikes us dumb when we least expect it. Furthermore, despite having memorized the telltale symptoms of this particular "malaise," we cannot even be completely sure sometimes. For all its grandeur, this affliction shares symptoms with a very tricky thing called infatuation. To sift through the emotional mire, amateur psychoanalysts among us devise elaborate tests to sort "the real thing" from a case of infatuation -- or indigestion. Unfortunately, the effort is but for naught if these wannabe Freuds themselves are involved. Remember the timeless maxim that love is blind? That being the case, any nugget of wisdom you supposedly gathered about your romantic wit is totally useless when you try self-help methods. Besides, we haughtily ignore every sensible bone in our body when the heart does the jig. And for all our intellectualization, don't you find it funny that for something we don't have a clue about, we can be so certain when we're irrevocably in love? What's even funnier is that your smitten pal asks for your advice for six hours on the phone. Then just when you've given every reason for him to postpone popping the question which he agrees with, he still asks the girl the very next day? You can't do anything except scratch your head. Then come the incredible, earth-shaking deeds in the name of love. Short of self-immolation, the inlababo dude promises the moon, stars and everything just out of reach just to hear that coveted "yes." Then answer me this one: who does own these heavenly bodies if every suitor has already claimed it for the miss he woos? But It's Over Now Another point of contention about romantic love is that if two people break up, they really weren't in love to begin with. That superbly mushy (eww) Roxette hit It Must Have Been Love by Roxette laments on post-love suffering. Yep, it's over now and you've lost it, kiddo. Now, was it love in the first place? Pragmatic people see love as conditional give-and-take deal. The idealist romantic says you don't love because of but in spite of. What say you? Do we pick the person we love romantically? Of course! So, if why do we choose a certain girl over another? Conversely, why would a girl choose to be your girlfriend when there's a more dashing stud showering her nightly with flowers and chocolates? In this case, we might say that we choose whom to love, and if we stick to him/her in spite of the personality quirks, then we have begun to love. I should have told you this article was going to be dizzying. You can't imagine how I'm beginning to feel light headed myself. The Unbearable Lightness Of Being In Love For some people, romantic love means everything and they can't function properly sans a romantic partner. Whether it's an unhealthy matter of dependency is up to you to figure out, but it's easy to understand how being in love can be comforting. Fewer things seem to bog us down when we're intoxicated with love. Yet others look at love as a burden to weigh their life down. How many times have we heard someone say, "I'm not ready for a commitment" or "I still have a lot of plans for myself"? Here, love and its prerequisite commitment is seen as a daunting task. Now we know just how love escapes our definition or prediction. For all its power, a typhoon doesn't stay to screw us up for very long. Plus, we can actually take steps to protect ourselves. You don't need me to tell you that the same doesn't hold true for love. The more careful or jaded among us might try to hold it off. But wherever we are, it's coming to get us. Be afraid, be very afraid. As for me, it's much easier to answer the question "What's your favorite color?" Blue.