On The Meaning of Love

Love.

It seems funny to me that something as indecipherable as love would have a set meaning that you can simply look up in a dictionary;

it is so much more than the mere sum of the words used to describe it. 

Love is something to be experienced in order to be understood, and even then I have no doubt that the perception of love varies from person to person, and is altered with every encounter. 

It is ethereal and constantly evolving, changing, transmuting from one beautifully amalgamated form of compatibility to another.

Love itself can never truly be put into words, only our inevitably limited comprehension thereof.

And still that record of our perception is but a reproduction of the shadow of smoke; it is nothing compared to the flame that inspires it.

I suppose that is why it is such a popular subject with writers and artists and poets and musicians alike; we all long to experience love, and the few that have want to be able to immortalize their memories thereof as vividly as possible. 

And so they write and sing and paint the dreams of love that they have lived, driven by the fear that they might one day forget even the slightest detail. 

And so love inspires the artist within.