The List: Love - By My Definition

Love is: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual growth. [M. Scott Peck, "The Road Less Traveled", 1978, Touchstone Books, New York, page 81] as amended by Jim Putnam

With a core by M. Scott Peck, that is my definition of love.  Peck's definition centered on spiritual growth, and I blatantly plagiarized it, though I always try to cite Peck.  I added physical, mental, and emotional.

I've hesitated writing about love because it can mean so many things to people.  It isn't uncommon for a single person to have more than one meaning in daily speech.  Many conflate love with God, but I deliberately try to stay away from associating love with God in any way.  If others want to define whatever deity concept they hold as love, that's their business, but doing so can immediately raise difficult communication barriers.

The most important part of this definition to me is "to extend".  Love is not automatic, there must be some level of extension, of work, for love to exist.  Love doesn't exist unless there is an extension of the self to enable growth.  Moaning about how terrible poverty is and how much we love the poor isn't love until we extend to nurture their growth.  Here, spiritual growth isn't sufficient.  Only when we extend to meet physical needs can we say love exists.

At one time I thought that love was the default for people, and that hate, violence, injustice, - the list could go on - was taught.  I am not so sure now.  I'd certainly like to hold to that, but I've slowly become less sure.  While there's reason to doubt, there is also reason to believe that love is a part of almost all people.  Other corruptions may take precedence in living, but I believe that for most, almost all people, there remains some level of love.  Perhaps that is naive of me, but if so, it's a condition I don't want to lose.

Language is so imprecise.  As I quoted Real Live Preacher last week,  "Words are rusty, jagged, pig-iron tongs fumbling for purchase in the liquid silk of her soul."  Defining love is difficult, but I've tried to give a flavor of what I mean by "Love."

Comments

Jim defines love as, "Love is: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual growth. [M. Scott Peck, "The Road Less Traveled", 1978, Touchstone Books, New York, page 81] as amended by Jim Putnam"

I would alter that definition to read as follows: "Love is: The drive or need to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing another's physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual growth. I suppose that nurturing one's self could be called self-love, but to me that is somewhat wide of the mark.

Mac

[Felix Grant]

Love is perhaps the biggest word there is, with all the definisitons it encompasses, and arguably the root of "The List".