“Love is love. You can’t describe it. It’s an emotion that makes you want to be with a person,” was the reply I received when I asked an Eastern Michigan University student if she could tell me in a sentence or two what love is. When I was asked to write an article about love, I was inspired to approach different students in EMU’s library and ask them the same question in order to get a better idea of what people today understand love to be.
The second person I approached was a 22 year-old girl. When I asked her the question, she looked startled, and then surprised, and then distraught: “I have no idea…that’s so hard…I just have no idea” she told me, apologizing. The third person I approached was a 24 year-old male student, who said the same thing: “I really don’t know. Love is indescribable. You only can express it physically.” The forth person I asked was another male student, who responded: “Love is finding someone that you get along with and enjoy spending time with.”
My informal survey made me aware of the fact that our generation is growing up with a concept of love that is self-centered and based merely on feelings and the gratification of desires. With the exception of one person, everyone I talked to agreed that love was an emotion, and that, rather than being about giving yourself to another person, it was about how the other person made you feel. Even more surprising was the number of people who responded “I have no idea” when asked what love is. Yet I can’t help but wonder how many of those people gave a card to their boyfriend or girlfriend on Valentine’s Day saying “I love you” in it.
No doubt that Pope John Paul II was fully aware of this fact when he wrote his book Love and Responsibility. In it he writes, “The person finds in love the greatest possible fullness of being…It is not enough to long for a person as a good for oneself, one must also, and above all, long for that person’s good…Goodwill is the same as selflessness in love: not ‘I long for you as a good’ but ‘I long for your good’” (82-83).
