What is Love?

What is love? The word ‘love’ is a very mysterious word. From a dictionary, the proper definition for the word is an intense feeling of deep affection. From my knowledge, love is when you want to take things to the next level in a relationship, when you are really passionate about something. In the book Everyday by David Levithan, the book is about how as mysterious person, A, who changes bodies and is someone new every single day falls in love with a girl he met named Rhiannon. In the book, whenever A talks about love, it teaches the reader that just because you might say you love someone, doesn’t necessarily mean you love that person in  the inside. The idea that the book Everyday is trying to portray is that showing love towards someone is different from actually feeling love for that person.

A good example of the showing love versus feeling love is with Rhiannon. Rhiannon is in a relationship with her boyfriend Justin. When A asks if she is in love with him, she replies with a simple yes. Now, even though she’s saying that she loves Justin, doesn’t mean she feels that way in the inside, well, because Justin is a bit of a jerk. She is simply hiding the fact that she has no feelings for Justin by just saying yes. A deeper insight to this idea is feeling love towards someone internally, or feeling love someone externally. Back to the example of Rhiannon. Externally, Rhiannon is saying that she loves Justin, but internally, Rhiannon has no feelings for Justin at all, but is stuck in this complicated relationship with him. This goes to show that loving someone in the outside is different from loving someone within. You won't know if it's true love just from hearing 'I love you'

However, you can tell if it's true love if the person really cares about the other, and is always thinking about the person. An example of this would be A's love towards Rhiannon. First of all, A says he’s in love with Rhiannon since the moment he got to spend the day with her. You can tell here that he shows his love, but how does he feel love for her? Well, A always has Rhiannon in his mind, and always thinks about if she is alright, because Justin may mistreat her sometimes. If you think about this internally and externally, A externally loves Rhiannon by saying that he loves her, but he also internally loves her by always thinking about her. If you’re wondering how just always thinking of someone is considered as love, the answer is that when you always are thinking of something, whether it’s your favorite sports team, or any special person, you can’t stop thinking about it and it’s stuck in your head. The  person or thing distracts you from other thoughts, that is called love. A is distracted by Rhiannon, and  he can’t think about other things at times because he is thinking about Rhiannon. You can tell if it’s true love when that person is all that is in your mind.

To conclude the whole idea of love, true love can be identified if you can both say you love that person, and if that person’s a distraction in your mind, but in a good way of course. Just saying you love won’t cut it, as you should feel that love as well.  Now, I know nothing about love. But this book really helped me understand more about this crazy idea known as love. Also, this book goes to show that love is a very confusing topic.