What is love? Is love romance? Yes. Did Shakespeare and generations of songwriters, poets, and movie producers get the whole concept of love in human relationships right? Yes, but society has been so overly involved with this one form of love it has overlooked and underscored the big picture of love! Love is not confined to emotions taking place within a human relationship. Love is many things, and inversely is not many as well.

Ok Mr. Know-it-all, how does one define love? First, we must begin by examining what love is not. Love is not something that can be linked to something tangible. Your neighbor claims he "loves" his shiny new sports car. Will your neighbor still "love" his car when a more exotic and expensive sports car roars past his house? No, he won't. So is this love? No again. Love is an affinity for someone or something that has no rival. Tangible and materialistic items always have a rival, therefore society places the label "love" were "really like" should be. Your neighbor really likes his new sports car.

Sometimes, on accident, we use "love" in the right context but for the wrong reasons! Lets pick on your poor neighbor again. Ten years have passed since he bought the sports car and after screaming the definition of love from your roof the whole neighborhood, including your neighbor, now knows the definition of love, but one day you hear him say it again! "I love my old sports car" How can this be! So you inquire a little bit as to why he "loves" his old sports car. He replies, "because of all the memories I have in it." Ah, and there it is. Your neighbor does not love the car. He loves the memories for which, there are no substitute! Your neighbor loves the memories of good times had in his old car.

Ok, enough about sports cars and neighbors who talk too loud. What about ideas? Can someone be in love with an idea? Absolutely, Dr. Martin Luther King liked his idea of equality for all races enough to pluck it from abstract thought and turn it into a goal. "He liked it enough to make it a goal, but how do we honestly know he loved it?" Just as William Wallace did centuries before in his pursuit of freedom, he died for it. In his mind there was no rival for equality, not even his own life.

Love is much more than people give it credit for as it transends far beyond the scope of couples. Love is Romeo and Juliet, Martin Luther King and equality, William Wallace and Freedom, and yes, even your loud neighbor and memories. Love is an affinity for someone or something that has no rival.