What is Love?

What is love?

"What is love, baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more" - that is the first thing that comes to mind when asked about the definition of love. And it has some truth to it. You have to let yourself be volnurable, possible to get hurt. When you open your heart to someone you gamble if she/he will accept your feelings and istead of draining your heart, fill it with more happiness. Definitely it can be a painful experience in our lives, but it is one that can be the most beautiful thing imaginable, that makes all of our everyday struggles easier and any moment that is shared with your loved one (even the most mundane and boring one)  incredible. To quote a song from the band The Correspondents: "It's better to have and lost than never loved at all / Just love the lust you'll have to leap without the fall."
Grzegorz from Poland

"Love is when you care more for a person than than you care for yourself. Love is also when you say: be careful, I'm with you or do you need something? For me Love is the only that does not hurt us."
Felli from Germany

"Love is the opposite of fear. I don't really get it, but that's what they say! Now I don't really know what the opposite is, but maybe it's not hate. Maybe it is fear after all. So the real question for this Valentine's is what is fear for you? What are you afraid of? Being alone maybe on Valentine's? Well, nobody likes to be alone. But tough shit, that's what love's for isn't it? So love is a game. It's a mixture of feelings, manipulated through the images the human mind picks up. It feels good, when things are bad. That's why we need war. War is good, because without it we wouldn't know how good life is in the West."
Filippos from Greece

"For me Love is that connection which connects YOU with EVERYTHING."
Zar from Pakistan

"What is love? Love is a severe mental condition - Platon. Love is about not even trying.. love is instinct to belong."
Rodrigo from Chile

"Love... is... putting someone else's needs before yours."
Daria from Poland

´Love is what unites us all and makes us stronger. No matter how dark times are, love will make us come over. so start with love."
Max from Germany

"Love can't be defined.
Love is to be felt.
Love is 'Good morning' message.
Love is 'Take the scarf. It's cold today'
Love is finding the time even if you have none.
Love is one soul in two bodies."
Beata from Poland

"Love is about that one cannot express him/herself correctly...love is about that dreaming all the time...love is about loving a friend, an animal, nature...love is organic"
Barış from Turkey

"Love is when you stop thinking logically and you doing things by your heart... Breaking the rules and becoming more productive and happy. Love can be real or platonic...People falling love in mysterious ways and the only common line is that they are becoming more happy and peaceful."
Dimitrios from Greece

"Love = a feeling which can be the best and the worst thing in the world... It somehow gives you comfort and balance or f*ck you up badly. It can be anything."
Mária from Hungary

"Love is being incredibly happy with someone. Even when they are not next to you, you are smiling because of the thought that you have them. Love is feeling very lucky you have found this person, being amazed by them every day. Love is understanding the other, putting yourself in their shoes before judging them, motivating them and knowing they make the best version of you. Love is the constant need to make the other person happy, to surprise them and not even doubting for a moment they want the same for you. Love is repeating "I love u" and getting as cheesy as you never thought you would be just because when you are with your special person, you can be silly, you are free to say whatever comes to your mind, you laugh and are a bit tra la la. Last but not least love is finding your partner more and more attractive with time.  To me love should be simple and fun, otherwise whatever it is you feel, sooner or later turns into a disaster."
Tsvetelina from Bulgaria

"I prefer the love maybe buddhists would use. They say true love is opening your heart to all human beeings and all creatures and created things in the universe. Having the knoledge that everything is connectedwith each other and knowing exactly if you spread your Love to everything and everyone - this love comes back to you and fill your heart with a big feeling which is beyond words."
Arkadius from Germany

"Love is a difficult word to define. Everyone has different experiences of love and as such different definitions. I can’t give you a definition for love but I can tell you my experience. I met Lisa by coincidence on the Camino de Santiago. No one believed it would last (not even us). We knew each other only a few days before we went back home. I had never been in a relationship before so I didn’t know what to expect. We started our relationship as a long distance. It was rough.
People told me we were moving too fast… “You’ve told her you love her already? That’s brave.”, “You’re meeting her parents already? That’s brave!”, “You’re moving in together already? That’s really brave!”. I wasn’t brave. We did what felt right for us.
Before Lisa, I had a hard exterior. I have always been sensitive but I never showed it. I didn’t like anyone to get close. I didn’t let anyone know what I was thinking and I trusted very few people. I feared vulnerability. Lisa chipped away at my exterior from day one. It was very very annoying! She kept at it until she got to my core. I often put on a cold front when I sensed I was being vulnerable. She kept chipping away. Now I have no hard exterior.
Love is when someone excepts you for in all your shades. They see your downfall and make up for your shortcomings. We might not like what we always see but we have excepted each other fully… good and bad. I love her when she’s happy, when she’s depressed or when she throws a temper tantrums because she does the same for me. She picks me up when I’m down. Unless we are both down…that’s bad…then we have to call our mums.
It won’t be long before I say the words “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”
I cannot imagine being able to love her more but every day I do."
Ryan from UK

Photo taken by Petar Milošević