A Literate Passion, By Anaïs Nin

Love pervades human history and our cultures, yet defining it can be difficult as the word love is used in a myriad of ways. It is used as a universal moniker for kindness and compassion. It is used to describe our feelings toward something; I love Game of Thrones or I love bacon. It is also can mean, as Merriam-Webster defines it, a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties. This definition of love is a unique experience of raising above our selfish human nature and putting another’s needs and feelings before our own. This selfless love most often expresses itself in familial or romantic relationships and can be recognized by the higher human feelings and behaviors it inherently manifests and differentiated by lower behaviors and feelings that often attempt to co-opt the term. Exploring examples

Love is realizing that the person you are holding means more to you than anything on this earth and it is feeling you are supremely important to someone else. Love is accepting somebody for who they are and not who you want them to be, accepting their imperfections. When you have been loved, you feel loved for who you are, the positive and the negative, as author Anaïs Nin wrote in A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953 “What is love but acceptance of the other, whatever he is.”

Love isn’t ownership or jealousy, it isn’t the base act of sex, but what you hope to perceive in the eyes of your lover. It isn’t selfish or cruel and while love can at times hurt, it never intends to. Love isn’t control of another or being controlled. It isn’t losing oneself or becoming whole, love strengthens you while adding to what you already are and will be. Love doesn’t abandon you in times of trouble or only appear sporadically. It doesn’t demand fealty and it’s never a burden or an