To "CHOOSE" to care about someone...isn't that relatively the same as saying, "I don't really, but I can initiate, or annihilate my feelings if I wish, for it is my choice".

Can you "choose" to love your child? Can you choose to love your grandparents? Can you choose to fall inlove? Or does it just happen, separate from ourselves, yet woven within the very fabric of "what we are".

If you can "choose" to deny affection, then you can also choose to encourage it. But what if it is not a mere matter of choice, but inherent to what we are as the sun, moon and stars is to our universe? Can we choose for night to fall..or day to break?

I object vehemently and diametrically oppose those that claim love is a "choice". Lovingly. ;)

The bottom line...love is not a choice...if you have children you know...because they are you. "Classify" that as self love,.. nonetheless, Love!
 

Goddess of reason:
"If love is a choice..if it is not real..then why does it hurt when it goes away?"
 

Goddess of Logic:
"Because it hasn't gone away, You allow it to hurt."
 

Goddess of Reason:
"When a human woman's husband dies, is it a choice to hurt? If that love was a choice, Why couldn't she simply turn it off, and make the "CHOICE" not to grieve, rather than allow herself to be subject to such?"
 

Goddess of Logic:
"It is morally acceptable to allow for grieving in this classification of love."
 

Goddess of Reason:
"Oh...are you saying that love is definable through certain...classifications?"
 

Goddess of Logic:
"Yes, there are many, many forms of love."
 

Goddess of Reason:
"Why then cannot a definitive line be discerned, and are there "some loves" that would be considered lower on the scale, than others?"
 

Goddess of Logic:
"The lines between love are very thin, and very blurred which causes confusion in most humans. Yes...there are loves, considered lower on the "scale" than others. For instance, "I love the work my cosmetic surgeon did on my new breast augmentation." This is considered lower on the scale of love "importance" than if one were to read ones child a bedtime story, or embrace a long lost sibling."

Goddess of Reason:
"What classifications are there, and are there classifications within these classifications? How about "clauses"...are there clauses in the formulas, thereby placing them in other classifications too?

Goddess of Logic:
"Why, funny you should ask that....

sacred love
holy love
divine love
Supreme love
just love
sympathetic love
compassionate love
romantic love
idealized love
delusional love
forsaken love
iriquited love
hate love
desire love
lust love
lie love
secret love
oppressive love
obedient love
sick love
denied love
reincarnated love
memory love
fake love
evil love

attach any word, thought or deed to any, some or all - to any one, some, or all of these and add an infinite amount of everything and nothing to any, some or all of that and you may have your answer. All of these tie into eachother...an endless disharmonious harmony. To list them all would take eternity for love is boundless and ironically, exceedingly inflective without any "real" way to classify it at all.  This is why we must KNOW love...experience it as fully as one can. As Kahlil Gibran implied so eloquently, "Love exists for itself". So...I guess you were right, Goddess Of Reason, for it is not a choice to love, but a choice to know love."

Goddess Of Reason:
"But you were also right, it is a choice after all. Not a choice to love, but a choice to try to know love, or the choice not to try. One can never fully understand love either, even with the desire to, because the beauty of love lies in it's mystery."

Written by Naomi Longson 2000