keeping it in SL....

Pep doesn't pester me for I am:

"Like to the Pontic Sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont ..."

In other words, I am stubborn.

Et tu Brute!
(which is the worst thing about a classical education - you forget it as soon as you have your tea and buns)

I don't think Brenda ever wore bloomers.

Is our friend, "Knicker-less" Watkins, Brenda's alt then?

Pie (Never bitten his tongue, nor even tongue-tied)

I'm probably going to come off as a jaded grump to some people, but I prefer to think of myself as a realist.

Love. Such a misnomer.

I'm not going to say the relationships people have are meaningless, because I don't believe they are. I am going to go on the record as saying I don't believe there is a mystical zen state you achieve with someone called "love".

What is "love"? Can anyone define it? A series of chemical reactions in the brain? Trying to delineate between "lust" and "affection" and "love" seems a bit like an effort in futility.

What I believe is that people simply find those with whom they are compatible—partially due to the instinctual drive to procreate, the social pressure to form a family, and a personal desire for companionship. Sure, we label that "love" but what does that do for us?

My point is really directed at the "is it really love?" comment. I think that's the wrong way to go about it. You will spin yourself in circles trying to determine if your feelings fit some nebulas definition that nobody can identify for you anyway. In my opinion, what you should ask yourself is something more concrete. Do I get along with this person? Do I enjoy my time with them? Do we see eye to eye on important issues, and if not do we allow the other person some levity? Are we attracted to one another? These are questions most people can probably answer, and I think they're more important than asking "am I in love?" Whatever that means...

Oh what's love got to do, got to do with it?
What's love but a second hand emotion?
What's love got to do, got to do with it?
Who needs a heart...
When a heart can be broken?

/me remains steadfast to his serious demeanor.

Another pet peeve of mine is when people recklessly toss around "I love you"s. Don't misunderstand, I think it's nice to show affection for others. The problem is, and it relates back to my previous post, sometimes people say "i love you" without really knowing what they're talking about or feeling. It's like they're substituting words for what they can't bring themselves to show with their actions... or heaven forbid, trying to hide their lack of feels and actions with hollow words. Remember? Actions speak louder than words. If you "love" someone, you don't need to tell them, they will know by your deeds. Now... I KNOW women want to hear it anyways (or so I'm told), even if they already know it.

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."
-Robert A. Heinlein

Not this one. I always say love is a VERB.

("When A Man Loves A Woman" is true but rarely put into practise. Except perhaps by stalkers...but then *most* love songs sound like stalker manifestos/co-dependent warning lists. ;p )

I feel the same way about my dog and my parents, but that's purely platonic.

I certainly wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life living with my parents either.

(That sounded wrong. For the record, I don't live with my parents. That was just an example. )

Hi Scott - I havent forgotten my promise. Pics.
I say "I love you" each day to my Mum when I phone her (5 or 6 times a day). When I get tired from the road and the "real life" I go back to her and I crash there for a few days. The Igbo people of Nigeria have a saying - "Iya ni wura" which translated mean "Mother is Gold" - if it doesnt mean that I stand corrected. But either way, mother IS gold.

It is easy to be jaded by love but you mustnt get so. In my reality, I lost a lover when I was 20. Each day I think of that lover - even now - and say to myself "I did say that I loved that partner - I did say it." Which is a comfort.

Love's fantastic. It's like Beethoven's Ninth on adrenalin. It's the smell of love I love. It's sunshine through rain clouds when the foxes are getting married as my Nanna would say. It's teh smell of Chanel and the comfort of Ferragamo desert boots. It's twists in your memory like the earth smell of truffles.

You gotta have it Scott!

Yeah you do Scott. Yeah you do - I speak from experience. I dont need it from a man BUT I wish I said it more to MY men.

Try John Donne - the love sonnets. He is about teh only poet who ever wrote while he was IN love - see his "The Sun Rising" or "Air and Angels"
And for a modern sensitivity try Philip Larkin. Auden's too aware he is in love.
Lennon and McCartney did a good job also. "Helter Skelter" is the best description of an orgasm in music that I know about.
And Bob Dylan. His early work.

I loved my first boyfriend with a passion that burnt my heart. When I am in love it's teh measure of my fire even now.

I think it's worthwhile saying it as practice, otherwise when you DO mean it you'll be so used to hiding your feelings that it will feel like you're telling a lie.

Trust me on this.

Re: Donne... I don't have much use for poetry, but I fell in love with "The Sun Rising".

Yeah, Sun Rising. Donne is totally dishy. He coulda watched the sun come up with me, I can tell you! Read a poem a day, Argent. It's vitamins for the soul.

I've got somewhat mundane taste in poetry...

Higgledy Piggledy
Herr Werner Heisenberg
Pleaded "your honor...
It just isn't fair!
That I was speeding is
Unascertainable,
Or if it's not then
I can't have been there!"

Or getting back to the topic, the best clean limerick I know...

A confirmed multilinguist, I fear
Found conditions for flirting severe:
A girl hardly knows
The response to her beau's
"Bitte, couchez avec mich, my dear!"

What you lot are calling love is just the label imposed by those with language on those chemical imbalances that history has proved by natural selection to be most effective for continuation of the species.

Pie (Do animals "love"? No, because they don't have language)

PS I love bacon sandwiches; that is a much more personally rational emotion.

That simply means that you love your dog and your parents. Good for you.

You're confusing "love" with "lust" or sexual attraction. They are two different things, though they are both often directed at the same person. C.S. Lewis distinguished between them by using the Greek word "Eros" for lust and "Agape" for the feeling you are calling "platonic love" and which is defined by the Heinlein I quoted earlier.

I love (agape) my dog.
I loved (agape) my parents.
I love (eros) Bruce Willis.
I love (eros AND agape) my Resident Geek.

and of course there's the frivolous use of that slippery four letter word that Pie threw in as a red herring...
I love (like) chocolate.

If they don't, then they don't experience any other emotion either.

Not quite right Lindal. The Ancient Greeks had four words for love (you left out philia and storge) and one for lust, which is thelema *not* eros, sorry, whatever CS Lewis said.

Pie (It's even more frivolous to love Bruce Willis or a dog than chocolate)

I'm as sure they experience fear as I am they don't experience love . . .

Pie ( . . . in the way any of the posters here have framed it!)

But fear is merely the word used to narratize chemical imbalances that increase the likelihood of a flight reaction, isn't it?

Thank you for making my argument for me.

Pie (Most excellent!)

Just occured to me - who are any of us to judge who else is in love? In SL or elsewhere.

I didn't know we were arguing. You might as well have been quoting from The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.