Love is focused attention.

Hour after hour, day after day she sits. No food, no water, warming the eggs in her nest from the heat of her body.

He sits close by in constant vigil of danger. Endlessly, tirelessly. Through the day searching out food for the newly hatched chicks.

Ruthlessly she will push the fledglings out of the nest, insisting they must fly on their own as soon as they are old enough.

Ruthlessly, even brutally she will drive the grown chicks away from the nest. For the species to survive, the young adult must now find its own mate so the cycle may continue.

That is love. Focused attention.

Romantic love is amore. This is love as a felt emotion between two people. A woman with her special man feels amore; toward her ailing grandmother, her father or her parakeet, she expresses love - focused attention. She may say "I love God". Yet how could she feel amore toward that which she cannot even comprehend?

She feels a burning lust in her loins, which is temporarily sated by joining with a man, real or fantasized. Is that love or amore. Or just lust, the drive to procreate the species.

Copyright (c) David Moyle 2003