What is Love? It is both a philosophical question, and yet at the same time our understanding of the nature of Love determines to a large extent the degree to which we know ourselves. The word "love" is not well defined. The ancient Greeks had many different words for love: philo(the love between friends), agape (the love of God, the kindness and compassion we show to all people) and Eros (sensuality and passion). The Love we know and experience when we “fall in love” is Eros, I’d define it as a strong emotion. It is a product of emotional like or dislike. It is conditioned: “as long as you make me feel good and you meet my expectations I’ll Love you, but if my expectations are not met and I am not satisfied…. I can’t love you…I might even hate you!” Philosophical viewpoint requires looking deeper than the loving relationship between two people in order to understand the nature of Love: The purpose of being human, as we evolve, is to learn about unconditional love. Unconditional Love is very different to basic emotion. It is not something that we do; it is a state of being. Unconditional love understands, accepts and allows, regardless of the circumstances. In this state there is no need to look for someone special, everyone is special, everyone is understood and accepted - this is LOVE! Great, now we have defined LOVE - it is the ability to understand, accept and allow people to be! Love-Emotion – is a passion, an attraction to a person and it is fleeting! We progress from Love-Emotion to Unconditional LOVE! To learn, we need to look at ourselves, at what motivates us or holds us back, and at where we must place more of our attention so we can be balanced and whole. The person we are learning to love is always ourselves! Therefore, there is no need to look for ever-lasting love, it doesn’t exist, it is a myth! What we need is self-knowledge; become more aware of our motives; expand our consciousness; accept and love ourselves unconditionally! How do we find a mate? It is still "a need" and we’ll take care of that in the next article! (smile)