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What is Love?
by Mike Epifani

What is love? Some have their own answers, some have an answer that’s not their own, and some can’t think of an answer to their own question in the first damn place. Love is a confusing thing.

When answering a question as important as this one, as universal and seemingly insurmountable as this one, my first instinct is to look to my idols. Legends, whose mark on this world made a profound impact on me, whose example of perseverance, brilliance, and craft shaped and shook my every cellular vestibule.

Friedrich Nietzsche said, “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Where there is love there is life.”

Notorious BIG said, “when the time is right, the wine is right, I treat you right, you talk slick, I beat you right.”

None of these quotes really answer the question. All they really do is make me more confused.

My first instinct was a bust so my second instinct was to dig deep within myself and write on love from personal experience. To try and put into words what love really means to me. Slap it all down onto the page, no holds barred, anything goes, no pussy footin’, and possibly no more idioms.

I’ve never considered love to be something that you see in the movies. Using a newspaper as an umbrella and kissing her under the neon sign of a themed diner or calling in a bomb threat to make sure her flight’s delayed. Love to me has never been about any of that sappy stuff.

Love to me is simple. It’s being able to have sex while watching Seinfeld and laugh together. It’s being patient and pushing aside judgement. It’s making promises and keeping them and not making promises you can’t keep. It’s trusting someone completely because you know they trust you just as much. It’s not wanting to finish in the mouth because you want to kiss later. It’s about appreciating that someone is complicated and compliment them for it.

Love is whatever you want it to be, which is the most confusing part about it. To Nietzsche, love is an underground hurricane. To Gandhi, love is the only thing that is true in this world and the only thing that will stand the test of time. To Notorious BIG, love is some kind of misogynistic personal worship that you allow someone to share with you.

But that’s not an answer. ‘Love is whatever you want it to be.’ And if it is an answer, it sucks.

My first and second instincts were far behind me and I was ready to give up. But then it happened. I used my third and final instinct. I went to the only person I can trust.

“What is love?” I asked.

“Love is just really really really liking someone,” she said.

My 5 year old niece is a philosophical prodigy.