my paper so far

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails...And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. ( 1 corinthians 13: 4- 14) “
After reading this, and many other explanations and definitions of the word love, i started to wonder whether or not the meaning of love can even be explained. Maybe love is just an emotion, an indescribable feeling. I tbegan to wonder what love is. Is it when you have felt like you truly know what love is, and then in one moment, you are overcome completely, your heart stopinng for an instant as you feel like your whole life has been insignificant until this very moment, as you realize what love is. You suddenly realize that the question of what love is can not be answered, it can only be felt.When youre heart is flattened in awe as you are drowned in emotion, scared and totally comfortable all at once. You know what love is. Its when you give your heart, totally and fully, and trust that whatever that person does with your heart is irrelevant, because trusting them with it was the ultimate expression of love. IS THAT LOVE?????? WHAT is love? I dont know, but I am goiing to find out.
I asked about fifty highschool students the question that has lain heavy on my soul now for weeks. What is love? I hoped somebody could give me my answer. The students I asked all came from different backgrounds, and I soon learned had VERY different opinions. Students answers were so unique and different from eachothers, that i wondered whether there answers had anything to do with their culture and gender, or if they were too different to compare. When asked to describe love in one word, answers varied as far apart as “weak” and “strong”. How such opposites as weak and strong can be used to describe the same word, i think only proves how complex and ambiguous the idea of love really is.
I asked each student to explain the meaning of the word love in one sentence. Though each definition was original and differnt from the rest, similair words and phrases were used repetitively. The word careing for example was used**** times. I decided to look up the word love in a dictionary to see if careing was used in the “real” definition. I found a few definitions, but none of them used the owrd caring. However, many words in the dictionary were also seen in students answers, such as, ineffable, emotional attachment, passion, etc. In fact, passion was repeated many times in thesauruses too. Another word used countless times by students was sex. Although sex is not the emotional deffinition of love I am interested in, the dictionary also described love at one point as being “sexual intercourse.” (dictionary)
Many answers were either statements such as, “i cant say” or “impossible to describe”, or in many cases, simply repeating the word love. This goes back to my idea of not being able to linguistically describr what love truly is.

outline

Outline

1. Introduction
a. talk about not only the cultural differences in the meaning of words, but differences among students of the same age, religion and culture.
b. Pose the question, what is love?
c. Discuss the general findings

2. 1st paragraph
a. How age and sex change peoples views
1. quotes

3. 2nd paragraph
a. How race/culture and religion affect peoples views
1. quotes

4. 3rd paragraph
a. Discuss whether or not I believe these facts affected it or if it is really just person to person

5. Conclusion
a. Discuss my end opinion and results

my poll

ok so heres my poll questions
Sex: M F
Age:
Ethnicity:
Religion:
Re you a foreign exchange student? YES NO
If so what country are you from:
In one sentence, describe what you believe "love" is.
In one word, describe " " " " " "
Approximately how many times a day do you use the word love? 0 1 2 3 4 5or more
*********************************
ok those are my questions, i pln on putting them on little slips of paprer or something and passin them out to get filled out. Then i will compare the results and see what people of different ages a nd races take view on the same word.

my actual, fianl, im-not-gonna-change-it, research question

ok, so this is my topic...ok, wut is my topic? I went back and read over the different things i wrote about it on this blog thing, and i came to the conclusion that i wonder so many things i have ni idea what i wan to know. I realised that the topic of love is very interesting. I was going to do my paper on the cultural differences of the view and use of different words, mainly the word love, and then i realised it varies between people of the same culrure. Ok, im goona do a poll, im gonna ask the following>Age:
sex:m f
race:
religion:
Describe what you believe love is in one senence.
One word:

About how many times aday do you use the word love? (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5or more)
umm, i need a nother question, wut else do i need to know to write this, hmm, religion

hey yall this is my main source thingy

ok im gonna do a poll, ill ask everybody and compare what differnt people view and express love as, ill compare different culutures, and different genders responses ans maybe dfferent ages, we'll seee

citation thingies

aerghhh, citations, i hate them, ok here goes... wait how do i make a citation if i dont have any research??? ahhhhh i need to actually start researching!!! but i dont know if this is an ok topic,, what exactly is my topic anyway?? hmmm, basicly what is love, and how do different people and cultures express and understand it differently.
ya THAT IS SO MY TOPIC QUESTION RESEARCH THING ahh caps... ok herer goes for real.. nah im bored...ok so i just went to a linguistic website and found out pretty much nothing, i emailed osme dude about whether or not the word love has different meaning in germany or if it is just the mind set, well ill see how it goes. the website was http://www.isadc.org/

************
# A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.
# A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance.
#

1. Sexual passion.
2. Sexual intercourse.
3. A love affair.

# An intense emotional attachment, as for a pet or treasured object.
# A person who is the object of deep or intense affection or attraction; beloved. Often used as a term of endearment.
# An expression of one's affection: Send him my love.
#

1. A strong predilection or enthusiasm: a love of language.
2. The object of such an enthusiasm: The outdoors is her greatest love.
this is list (quote) from the website http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=loveit made me realize that there is enough controversy in just amreica over what love is...
great!! this keeps getting harder..
***************
adulation, affection, allegiance, amity, amorousness, amour, appreciation, ardency, ardor, attachment, case, cherishing, crash, crush, delight, devotedness, devotion, emotion, enchantment, enjoyment, fervor, fidelity, flame, fondness, friendship, hankering, idolatry, inclination, infatuation, involvement, like, liking, lust, mad for, mash, partiality, pash, passion, piety, rapture, regard, relish, respect, sentiment, soft spot, taste, tenderness, the hots, weakness, wild for, worship, yearning, zeal
Antonyms: hate
these are quotes, alist of synonyms for love from the website http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=love
wow, if all of these are love, no wonder we use the word so much,i dont believe that any of these mean love actually, maybe they are some parts of it, but no, one is not love by itself, nor is the combination....DOES NOBODY KNOW WHAT LOVE IS!!??

citation thingies

aerghhh, citations, i hate them, ok here goes... wait how do i make a citation if i dont have any research??? ahhhhh i need to actually start researching!!! but i dont know if this is an ok topic,, what exactly is my topic anyway?? hmmm, basicly what is love, and how do different people and cultures express and understand it differently.
ya THAT IS SO MY TOPIC QUESTION RESEARCH THING ahh caps... ok herer goes for real.. nah im bored...ok so i just went to a linguistic website and found out pretty much nothing, i emailed osme dude about whether or not the word love has different meaning in germany or if it is just the mind set, well ill see how it goes. the website was http://www.isadc.org/

************
# A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.
# A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance.
#

1. Sexual passion.
2. Sexual intercourse.
3. A love affair.

# An intense emotional attachment, as for a pet or treasured object.
# A person who is the object of deep or intense affection or attraction; beloved. Often used as a term of endearment.
# An expression of one's affection: Send him my love.
#

1. A strong predilection or enthusiasm: a love of language.
2. The object of such an enthusiasm: The outdoors is her greatest love.
this is list (quote) from the website http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=loveit made me realize that there is enough controversy in just amreica over what love is...
great!! this keeps getting harder..
***************
adulation, affection, allegiance, amity, amorousness, amour, appreciation, ardency, ardor, attachment, case, cherishing, crash, crush, delight, devotedness, devotion, emotion, enchantment, enjoyment, fervor, fidelity, flame, fondness, friendship, hankering, idolatry, inclination, infatuation, involvement, like, liking, lust, mad for, mash, partiality, pash, passion, piety, rapture, regard, relish, respect, sentiment, soft spot, taste, tenderness, the hots, weakness, wild for, worship, yearning, zeal
Antonyms: hate
these are quotes, alist of synonyms for love from the website http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=love
wow, if all of these are love, no wonder we use the word so much,i dont believe that any of these mean love actually, maybe they are some parts of it, but no, one is not love by itself, nor is the combination....DOES NOBODY KNOW WHAT LOVE IS!!??

other places

thesaureses

PLACES TO GET ANSWERS

i went on google and asked what is love and it came up with web definitions, a very good resource...

is that love??

I think ive decide what i am gonna do my paper on. You know in the movie moulin rouge how he says something like, "the most important thing in life is to love and be loved in return."??? well in many ways thatis true, at least i believe so.. i mean if you love what youre doing or who you are with or who you are, then you will be happy. I was going to make my question be about Why it is we love what we love and hate what we hate, and then i realized that i cant answer that if i dont know what love is. So in many aspects my question , the one thing i want to really kknow in life, is What Is Love?? Is it different to different people, and is the love you feel for your pet say, the same love you feel for your friends?? WHAT is love??? does anyone know??? and maybe we think we know what love is and really its somethingbeyond human and we cant experience it to its fulest. We use the word love in so many different situations, you may walk up to someone and say, "i love your shirt!" and then you will go and say, "i love you" to your best friend. Now that cant be the same feeling, so why is it the same word? Maybe I csn research what people believe love is, by doing a poll or something.. or i can see how different cultures use the word love differentlky, and express love differently. When someobody is really happy about something that doesnt affect you but makes them feel good, and in turn YOU feel happy because they are, is that love? Is the excruciating pain you feel inside when you see your friends hurt or upset love? When you cant hink of anything but that one person all day, and you caant help wondering about them, is that love? Is the jittery fellin gyou get in your stomach, so similar to the one you get on a rlooercoaster, when youre around someone, is that love? MAybe it cant be summed up in one experience but instead, is the combination of being able to feel all of these things and more all at once, being totally content, but anxious about everyhting concerning tha person, while you are teh happiest youve ever bben, at the same time as you know the pain, and have a new level of sadness, knowing what life wlould be like without the person. Is this love?? when you feel like part of your heart has been ripped out and is the hands of another, and knowing that everyword that person says will be like either comfotting or killing your heart, and you have no power to stop these feelings, is THAT love?? When you have felt like you truly know what love is, and then in one moment, you are overcome, completely, your heart stops for an instant as you feel like your whole life has been insignificant until this very moment, as you realize wht love is. You suddenly realize that the question of what love is can not be answered, it can only be felt.When youre heart is flattened in awe as you are drowned in emotion, scared and totally comfortable all at once. YOu KNOW what love is. Its when you give your heart, totally and fully, and trust that whatever that person does with your heart, is irrelevant, because trusting them with it, was the ultimate expression of love. IS THAT LOVE?????? I dont know. Do you?

insignificant lifetime

hmmm. what to write about....i just got back from float building, it was kinda fun... i was thinking about something ALOT today..but i dont remember what it was, something about life and generalization...that makes me think, we can complain and complain about stereotypes and conformity, but in the end no matter wut we do we wil always be judged. We can't change that. We can however change HOW we are judged..For instance girls, if we leave our house wearing skirts no longer than our belts and really tight shirts and stufff, we shouldnt complain when people call us sluts.. If you wear alot of preppy clothes but in actuality act really different and not preppy you are still gonna be called a prep. How you present yourself makes a difference... Like people will peirce and tatto themselves and get a mohawk and dye it hot pink, and then theyl complain about people giving them weird looks or thinking their teouble. If you dress how you feel you will still be misjudged, but i think it will be alot closer to the truth. I was also thinking about how people are always kind of wearing masks. Like their are so many "groups" you can be put in. You may pretend to be tough and really be scared all teh time, you may pretend to not care, and really be very sensitive to the subject. We all do it. It really is a mask. Maybe we dont tell people what we really feel because we are scared of being judged. Maybe we think that no one else feels the same way. Maybe because if we tell people what bothers us and how we honestly feel about things we will become vulnerable to them. Being who we are might be like superman and kryptonite. People wuld know how to make us weak. BUT they would also know how to please us. Peopole would know what not to talk about with you and what to say to make you feel better, i think its kind of a win lose situation. I was thinking the other day about how everyone has a "deepest darkest secret", adn i was wondering what it realy is. I asked my self wut mine was, and then i realized i couldnt answer that without knowing what one is.. At first i thought it was like, "the time you wet your pants in kindergarten cuz ya couldnt make it" and then i realized everyone has a story like that so it cant be so dark and deep. Then i realized that maybe everyones deepest darkest secrets are really just afeeling. They arent a certain moment, they are a way you feel, an idescribable thing. I was thinking about it and secrets are the one thing that you can take to the grave. SOme have the power to make a HUGE difference, if they didnt they wouldn be secrets. I guess these are all things i wonder about , but they wont make a very good research paper. I wonder what wil..The things i wonder about arent factual, they cant be researched, tehy can only be felt and experienced. Like my big question.. is that there has to be more...doesnt there?? I mean we all live life, spending it trying to get titles like Dr. and PHD and stuff when in the end we'll all be gone and forgotten any way. We spend forever trying to please people that eventually will be just as gone as us.. why not pleasse yourself by doing what you think is rite..i mean say we all live to be about 70, theres already been 2005 years we've counted, 70 starts looking pretty small when you see how many years theyre are...and how many are to come... I would say our whole life is insignificant, but then what motivation wiuld we have to accomplish anything if it all ends up in dust in the end. Thats why i fgure tehr has to be more out there... we have to be working towards something... There must be something beyond this life... I wonder....