Love

I asked a friend, "what is love?" She said chemicals in your head.

I think chemicals are something and that they may often lead to love but I don't think they themselves constitute it. I'm thinking it -- love -- is something we will ourselves to do -- not something we feel. Active, not passive. Chemicals jamming up our systems is something and can lead to feelings and feelings can lead to actions. But feelings aren't actions.

Jesus and Paul both agree, which is possibly why I fell into this perspective to begin with. Jesus is said to have said that "greater love has no man than this, that he lay his life down for his friends" and Paul is said to have written that "[l]ove is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud . . . [and it] never fails." That last part, on a side note, is hard to reconicle with experience.

It's kind of funny that I think that love is something one wills oneself to do since I'm not really sold on the notion of freewill.

It may be the case that I'm only arguing semantics.

In other news, a new kitten's started hanging out around the yard. She's really young and at first she was afraid of me and the other cats. She took to Bandit, though, who used to kill, or at least try to kill, other dogs for eating his food and now sometimes I catch them eating together out of the same dish. Therefore, Kyle and I have decided that Bandita -- "little Bandit" -- is an appropriate name for her. But I think I'll be calling her Ita for short. She likes to hang around outside the livingroom window sometimes at night and meow and scratch the window until I go outside and hold her for a while. And she likes carrying on conversations with me -- about what, I have no clue. And she's into following me all over the place, except for when she's hunting bugs and climbing trees. She makes chemicals explode in my head.

Thanks, Anna, for the pic.