Likings and Loves for the Sub-Human

'This blog post was done in remembrance of my favorite oriental brother, Theo Ng. Praying for you (almost) every day bud!'

Did you know that a 'Gentleman Club' is just a fancy name for a brothel/strip club? I sure as hell didn't, and I learned the hard way. Just wanted to put that out there, just so no one else makes the same stupid mistake that I did.

Anyway, in other news, we've recently managed to run another successful iStand Weekend here in Melbourne. It was an incredibly enjoyable retreat, with the main themes being focused around 'The Four Loves'. I was asked to give a talk on the difference between 'like' and 'love'. How fun!
Anyway, I knew that in order to pull off a successful presentation, I would have to do a bit of research on love. And so I did. It was a long and hard journey, but it was well worth the effort. I myself had come to have a more fuller understanding of the word 'love'.

The Journey Through Love

When I was told that the theme for our iStand weekend would be on Love, the first 'formal' research I did about Love was a compilation of what ordinary people thought 'Love' meant to them. I posted my results on a previous blog post (What Is Love). A couple of answers that I got which I thought were interesting enough to include in my presentation were:

• Love is when you love someone
• Love is like on steroids
• Love is giving someone the power to destroy you, yet trusting them not to

Now, what I had learned from this compilation is that everyone has their own idea on what love is, but everyone is intrigued by what true love is.

For my next chunk of research, I went to the worlds top source for information: Google.

The first result that pops up when you Google 'Love' is 'The Love Calculator - Calculates the chance on a successful relationship between two people.'

Now, I personally believe that the 'Love Calculator' is a piece of shit and a waste of time. However, I clearly am a minority when it comes to that statement. According to Google, every day the 'Love Calculator' gets millions of hits, and according to Jamster, the 'Love Calculator' was the most profitable service that the mobile service was offering.

So clearly, with this information in mind, I could fairly state that everyone is looking for love, but some people are looking in the wrong places. The 'Love Calculator' would easily be one of these wrong places.

The next source I decided to use to research Love was YouTube. What happens when you type in 'What is Love' on YouTube? You get a buttload of music videos. Nothing else.
After about 20 minutes of fishing through all the 'Love' related videos on YouTube, I decided to give up. There was literally nothing informative at all. Only music videos, which included such classics as:

• Love Is In The Air - John Paul Young
• I Believe In A Thing Called Love - The Darkness
• Crazy Little Thing Called Love - Queen
• This Love - Maroon 5
• Where Is The Love - The Black Eyed Peas
• Love The Way You Lie - Eminem Ft. Rhianna
• Can You Feel The Love Tonight - Elton John
• What Is Love (Baby Don't Hurt Me) - Haddaway

As awesome as these classic hits are, they weren't what I was looking for at all. It seemed like everywhere I looked, people were talking about love. They sing about it, they write about it, and they search for it everywhere. But what exactly is love? How is it that people can say that 'I love pizza', but that they can also say 'I love my parents'? How is it that we use the same word to describe two completely different relationships? Even with that being said, what is 'love' in its truest form? We tend to 'love' people when they meet our needs, but we stop loving them when they stop meeting our needs. If someone says that they 'love' pizza, how come they don't love it when the pizza tastes like shit?

I had the questions, but I needed answers, and YouTube wasn't helping. So, for my next source of information, I used what many high-school students would describe as 'the saving grace of assignments': Wikipedia. I was a long-term fan of The Free Online Encyclopedia, and I didn't want to be let down. It had never failed me before.

Anyway, Wikipedia described love as 'a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection'. It seemed like this was a pretty good description for love, but it didn't give me a way to easily distinguish the word 'Love' from 'Like'. As my English teacher used to say, 'An answer isn't really an answer if you don't understand the answer, or if the answer doesn't fully answer the question'.

But then it hit me. The best place to get answers. Like I said before, I had the questions, but I needed answers. And the place where I could get the answers was at the home of questions: Yahoo Answers.

Every day, Yahoo Answers receives approximately 823,966 questions and answers. That works out to 34,331 per hour, which works to about 572 per minute, which is 10 questions and answers posted EVERY second!

I decided to use this rapidly growing internet phenomenon to get an answer to one of my many questions: 'What is the difference between "Love" and "Like"?'

Anyway, within 10 seconds of posting my question on Yahoo Answers, 3 users had 'found my question interesting' or whatever. After 2 minutes, a guy named 'Raja222' answered with 'If love is blind, then like is as bright as the sunshine'. I really liked this analogy. 5 minutes later, a guy named 'CrazyOldMaurice' (who, buy the way, is considered a 'top contributor') gave an answer which I thought broke down Raja222's analogy quite well. CrazyOldMaurice said that 'Like is an enjoyable feeling, while love is unconditional, no matter what our feelings are'.

I felt really pleased with Raja222 and CrazyOldMaurice's answers, but there was no way for me to know if these guys were theologians or if they were just making shit up. Feeling a little uneasy with this thought, I decided that I would ask a priest. So, first, I asked a priest named Fr Chris Ryan. Fr Chris recommended that I should read up on St Thomas Aquinas, who had quite a vast and interesting way of defining love. Now, I really didn't want to sit down all day and read Thomistic Essays, so instead, I decided to ask someone else.

I then sent an email to a priest named Fr Ken Barker, asking him to give me his understanding of the difference between 'Like' and 'Love', and if he could, to give me a quick quote on St Thomas Aquinas' understanding about love. Ken's reply pretty much summed up what Raja222 and CrazyOldMaurice had said in detail. 

When we say we "like" someone we are usually referring to an attraction towards that person - maybe because of looks, or personality, or intelligence , or wit etc. We mean we are drawn to them and want to spend time with them etc. This can lead in some cases to development of friendship.

When we say we "love" someone the word can mean many things. But if we are saying that we love the person as Jesus has loved us, then we are saying that regardless of whether I am attracted to the person (i.e. like them) I still choose to love the person i.e. want the best for that person, and act for the good of that person, regardless of how I feel about the person. Loving is not about feelings. It is a decision. It is not about necessarily liking the person, but rather about deciding to think and act for the good of the person.
St Thomas Aquinas defined love as 'to will the good of another'.- Fr Ken Barker

 I really enjoyed Fr Ken's reply, and immediately fell in 'like' with St Thomas Aquinas' quote. 'To will the good of another'. How amazing. In just 6 words, he managed to give an accurate definition for 'love'.

The 'YouCat' also has another great definition for love: 'The free self-giving of the heart'. Its a good definition, but not as good as old Tommy-Gun's.

In conclusion, I have to say that love is not a feeling or an emotion.
Good old JPII once said that 'a person must not be merely the means to an end for another person'. In other words, we shouldn't treat people as objects or stepping stones for self-gain. That isn't love.
Love isn't always a pleasant feeling; in my experience, the feelings you experience within true love are usually the opposite to pleasant.
Love is a decision. It is a choice.
'Liking' develops quickly and arrives spontaneously, requiring little effort.
'Loving' develops over time, and requires much more effort and grace.
'Liking' is about what makes us feel good.
'Loving' is so much more. It is unconditional. No matter what.