Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.
Desiderata (Text-only version)
From there I did a search and found a full length PBS documentary called The Mystery of Love. It's just under two hours.
http://youtube.com/wa;tch?v=ordIy3ZEp6o
I hope you can find the time to view it. There are subtitles in another language but it's in English. The program discusses several different kinds of love we feel and express. It focuses on those categories through the experiences reported by a diverse group of Americans. I was impressed from the beginning by the documentary and decided to watch it all on my iPad while working on a couple of winter crochet projects that needed completion. I finished them both. In my world, watching videos in the middle of the day is a "no no." But I felt that basking in the study of love was the perfect way to spend the day. In the middle of the show I got a call from Sam, who needed me to leave my research to get some business done. When I returned to my video I had "lost my place" on my iPad and had to return to the beginning.  The repetition helped me to understood even better the message of that media. But I only got back to the beginning after landing on and watching another YouTube video about love.  This one is also fascinating, but more quickly paced and somewhat scientific:
Finally, I would like to share one more lovely piece.
From The Papyrus Of Ani ~ Egyptian Book Of The Dead (or so it says)
http://nichirenscoffeehouse.net/books/Osiris_46.html
As if I'd slept a thousand years underwater I wake into a new season.
I am the blue lotus rising.
I am the cup of dreams and memory opening--
I, the thousand-petaled flower.
At dawn the sun rises naked and new as a babe;
I open myself and am entered by light.
This is the joy, the slow awakening into fire as one by one the petals open, as the fingers that held tight the secret unfurl.
I let go of the past and release the fragrance of flowers. 


I open and light descends, fills me and passes through,
each thin blue petal reflected perfectly in clear water.
I am that lotus filled with light reflected in the world.
I float content within myself, one flower with a thousand petals, one life lived a thousand years without haste, one universe sparking a thousand stars, one god alive in a thousand people.
If you stood on a summer's morning on the bank under a brilliant sky, you would see the thousand petals and say that together they make the lotus.
But if you lived in its heart, invisible from without, you might see how the ecstasy at its fragrant core gives rise to its thousand petals.
What is beautiful is always that which is itself in essence, a certainty of being.
I marvel at myself and the things of earth. 

I float among the days in peace, content.
Not part of the world, the world is all the parts of me.
I open toward the light and lift myself to the gods on the perfume of prayer.
I ask for nothing beyond myself.
I own everything I need.
I am content in the company of god, a prayer that contains its own answer.
I am the lotus. As if from a dream, I wake up laughing.
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Comments: 37
On the question of LOVE ~ What it is depends upon what we need to learn in life, I believe. Many a time we come in contact with those who we see as unloving. And yet, the very unloving nature of a person that we experience at any given point in time is the fire that propels us to express what REAL LOVE is to us.
Real love asks nothing of us. Yet provides so much nourishment for us.
What good is it to say that you know LOVE if you have never given it to its fullest measure.
Those who know love share love. And those who share love are the people who can answer the question of what love is.
Blessings to you ~ This is NOW FEATURED in Artistic Minds®
I'll be back after I've seen every link that you've added ~ probably tomorrow...
I've still got to look at your links, and I don't want you do think that I have forgotten. I was so wrapped up in your Character Development of Jed that I was really blown away ~ truly you are a very creative and inspiring person Granny Janny. You're really making our experimental Epic exciting!
HUGS, and this is still FEATURED you know.
Yup!
My mother had a framed quotation about love that my father had written for her...I remember just bits and pieces and wish I hadn't lost it when we had the fire...
What love is not
for some reason I don't understand, my sound is not working...
"Love" is my most favorite subject to read about or witness: )
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