What is love?

More than a feeling

Love often starts as a feeling — warm, fluttery, sometimes huge. But feelings come and go, like the weather. If love were only a feeling, it would disappear every time we got tired or grumpy.

So here is a secret the wisest people have always known: love is also something you do. It's a choice you make, again and again — to be kind, to wait calmly, to be there for someone even when it isn't easy. The feeling is the spark. The choosing is the fire that keeps it burning. That's why the oldest wisdom calls love a verb — a doing word: not something you have, but something you give. And of course, the warm feeling of love is a wonderful thing to have too — the very best love is the feeling and the giving, hand in hand.

Four old words for love

English has just one word for love, which can be confusing. The ancient Greeks had a few. Giving them names helps us see that love comes in different shapes:

The biggest love isn't earned.
It's given.

Agape — the love that gives

Agape (say it ah-GAH-pay) is love that doesn't keep score. It's helping the kid no one else will sit with. It's forgiving someone even when they didn't earn it. It's being kind to a stranger you'll never meet again.

Agape is the love that holds the world together. And here's the wonderful part: you don't have to be grown up, or rich, or important to give it. You already have everything you need. One small act of agape — done today, by you — is one of the most powerful things in the whole universe.

And agape has a quiet first shape, even gentler than giving: simply choosing not to hurt. Before love ever hands anything over, it does no harm — that soft “I won't hurt you” is where love begins. The bottom and the top are the same love, all the way up.

The kindness that comes back

Here's something curious. We just said real love doesn't keep score — and it doesn't. You never give it to get something back. And yet… it comes back anyway. Not because you chased after it, but because you didn't.

Think of every kind act as a small seed you plant in the world. Some seeds you watch grow the same day — a new friend, a smile given back, a world that's a little warmer to live in. Others grow quietly, under the ground, turning up in ways and at times you could never guess — a quiet feeling of being looked after. People have many names for this. You may have heard that you reap what you sow, or the word karma. They are all pointing at the same old truth: love given out finds its way home.

One gentle truth: this only works the kind way around. Kindness tends to come back — but when hard things happen to good people, it is never a punishment. The universe isn't keeping a list of your mistakes. It leans toward good — and so do you.

How to practise love today

Love grows by doing. Here are small seeds you can plant right now:

• Say something true and kind to someone who looks down.
• Listen all the way to the end, without planning what you'll say next.
• Forgive one small thing, and let it go like a balloon.
• Help without being asked, and without needing a thank-you.
• Say or write one lovely, true thing about your own self — there is only one of you, and that is worth loving too.

And think about this for a moment: the universe is so big it's hard to picture — trillions of galaxies, more stars than every grain of sand on every beach on Earth. Yet in all of it, in all of time, there has never been another you. Not one, ever. How amazing is that?

The same love, three ways

Here is one truth — that giving love is good for the giver too — told in three different voices. Start with the warm one. If you'd like to look closer, open the others. Pick whichever way feels right to you.

Questions to wonder

• Can you love someone and be cross with them at the same time?
• Is it braver to be loved, or to love?
• What's the most loving thing anyone has ever done for you?