I Want To Know What Love Is
For Valentine’s day, I wanted to discover what love really meant. In my professional, journalistic opinion, there are only two ways to find out:
1) Either cry myself to sleep while listening to Def Leppard’s Love Bites or,
2) Ask students, faculty and staff at Miami Dade College how they define love. Unfortunately for Joe Elliott fans everywhere, I did the latter.
Here are some of the highlights from my search.
“Love is helping each other. Helping the closest one that you have.”— Alma Aguirre, 50, Custodian.
“Being with your best friend. I don’t know how else to describe it. Right now my boyfriend, um, he’s my best friend. I mean I don’t really have many friends, so like that’s my best friend. So it’s cool.”— Kathyrn Garcia, 20, biology major.
“ Love has to come from within, not from the outside. Once you see the person just coming, you’re like, ‘Oh, there is that person right there’… You see them just for a second and you get really happy and that makes your whole day right there.”— Karla Ladesma, 21, journalism major.
“I’m probably the wrong guy to ask, but I guess I would define love as memories, how about that? If you can spend time together and get memories together, I think you have a bond together. I mean, that’s what it is, I’m not sure.”— Dr. Michael McGauley, 53, Physics and Earth Sciences professor.
“Love is willing to lay your life down for another person, kind of like what Jesus did. My little brother, he’s done a lot of things that wouldn’t really require, that you could pretty much say that you don’t really need to play a role in his life anymore, but my love for him has continuously allowed me to overlook what he’s done, you know, and continue to be there for him.”— Devon Perfumo, 21, business administration major.
“I would define love by peace and commitment. The love I feel, for example, toward my children. You can’t beat that.”— Israel Jarquin, 37, benefits analyst major.
Most of the interviewees used their partners, family members and friends as examples of love. Interwoven in each answer was a sense of gratitude for the people closest to each respondent’s heart. In that way, Valentine’s Day is like Thanksgiving, a reminder of the individuals that make each life a little bit sweeter.
