In the spirit of Valentine's Day, and inspired by Lauryn Hill's "To Zion - Interlude," I asked my students to define love. Here are just some of their responses:
Boys:
Love is very important for me. Love means to like something or someone a lot. Example: I love my dad.
To love someone is to care about them, risk your life for them
Love – feeling happy inside by someone you really like and admire a lot
Caring about a person’s existence
Is something only the heart can choose and not the brain
What is love? Love is a series of nonsense that most girls want and some people like and some boys don’t get
Girls
To me love has no definition. It has meaning; it’s a feeling you have towards someone. You adore and cherish someone. It doesn’t necessarily have to be spoken; it shows from the bottom of your heart.
Love is the rescue from loneliness. The best medicine. A person's gravitational pull to another person. Love is the look in the eye that has the key to the heart. Love is saying the right words to say for a connection.
Love is like a combination of strongly adore and admire. When somebody loves you, the person admires you and is quite willing to do anything to protect you.
To me love is something that you feel toward a person that is worthy of trust and who you enjoy spending your time with. It’s a strong feeling that you only get with a few people in your life and those people are the ones that you don’t want to loose.
Love is when you feel good with a person (you like) and you are yourself. Love can be friendship. Love is when you feel happy and light with the people you like without having to change your personality. Words aren’t necessary, but you appreciate the others company. Love is when you try to get one's attention and you smile and feel merry when you are with the person. Love is when you feel depressed and your heart hurts when you aren’t with that person. You give gifts without counting and you would do anything to protect the ones you love. Unfortunately, I don’t think love lasts.
Fast-forward to about 4:30 for the interlude.
I'm glad someone else sees V-Day as a day to celebrate many kinds of love, not just the romantic kind. My love of love took something of a beating this year (what is love without trust??) and it's always hard to keep an open heart when it's thoroughly broken, but one thing hardship always teaches me is resilience. So this V-Day was a bit about self-love, too, which is always a good thing.
ReplyDeleteCool post Shannon. I forgot you said you were blogging while you were over there! I sort of took Valentine's day off this year... I did go out with my girlfriend but I not with all the glitz and glam of a normal Valentine's day. It was actually quite enjoyable this way. There was no pressure to outdo what everyone else was doing for their significant others and the time I would have spent "jazzin" up the holiday festivities, I spent showing the people I care about how much I love them.
ReplyDeleteWhat sparked my comment was the "Unfortunately, I don’t think love lasts" cliffhanger lol. My first thought was "why does she think that?" and then "is she just referring to romantic love or what?". Whichever one or many types you were referring to, I believe it does last... I learned a lot about love from this girl I met in Ms. Mazach's (the favorite teacher of Leonard and myself :D) class and if love didn't last then I wouldn't be here commenting or trying to keep up that girl as a friend. Hope all is well over there!