By Morgan Hatfield

“The Meaning of Love”

To love is to share life together
to build special plans just for two
to work side by side
and then smile with pride
as one by one, dreams all come true.

To love is to help and encourage
with smiles and sincere words of praise
to take time to share
to listen and care
in tender, affectionate ways.

To love is to have someone special
one who you can always depend
to be there through the years
sharing laughter and tears
as a partner, a lover, a friend.

To love is to make special memories
of moments you love to recall
of all the good things
that sharing life brings
love is the greatest of all.

I’ve learned the full meaning
of sharing and caring
and having my dreams all come true;
I’ve learned the full meaning
of being in love
by being and loving with you.

— Krina Shah

“The Meaning of Love” is a poem that I can personally connect to as well as many other teenagers like me. Growing up we have always been around the idea of “love,”,wondering what it would be like to be in this position. Love is desired by a lot of individuals, and love is the main focus of life in a society. I believe people are always talking, thinking and imagining things about love. Many teenagers truly don’t understand the meaning of love and are unaware of what it is like to deeply be in love. I feel like this meaning of love has changed a lot over the years, and nowadays most teens think they have experienced the true meaning of love when, in reality, they haven’t. The reason I chose this poem is because I think it’s interesting to see how many people have different perceptions of love. Love has changed a lot of the years, predominantly being negative changes.

“The Meaning of Love” is a poem that talks about all the reasons why people are in relationships. Throughout this poem the narrator explains what their view of love is. I feel like the author was writing this poem while they were in a serious and healthy relationship. The author writes down all the things they view about what love brings you and your partner. The author explains that they know the meaning of love just by loving their significant other. In the poem the author says, “I’ve learned the full meaning of being in love by being and loving with you” (Shah). The author is trying to show that their significant other has taught and helped them in many ways. The author talks about love as something sacred and special and that loving someone or being loved by someone is something that can better your life. As you can see in this poem the author explains the meaning of love in positive and happy ways. The author is showing all the readers that this is something you shouldn’t miss out on. In this poem, “love” is viewed as something that you learn a lot of things about life and many positive things come out of being in love. . 

This poem possesses symbolism and figurative language. The symbol in this poem is how specific activities help individuals fall in love, “love” being the main focus of the poem and using this to symbolize why people actually fall in love and what events lead up to that moment. The author uses this symbol to explain why many individuals desire to be loved and why it gives them many reasons for making their life better and happier. The symbolism that the author shows is that love often brings meaning to people’s life and will often make someone want to wake up in the morning. Throughout the poem the author wants to demonstrate all the reasons why you should love someone and the things that it can do to you. The author doesn’t directly compare two things together, but the author repeatedly is comparing love to something it brings to that individual. The author uses metaphors for example, one of the lines says, “To love is to help and encourage” throughout the whole poem the author uses indirect metaphors by comparing “to love is to” and a reason followed after it. 

Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson is an book that talks about different metaphorical concepts and ideas. In this book it talks about TIME IS A VALUABLE COMMODITY; in the book the author says this theme entails the idea of “have, give, lose, thank you for.” This theme talks about the idea of “time” being valuable and you can lose this time at any moment. This idea connects with the poem because this poem talks about how important love is and that the “Meaning of love” is valuable. In the poem it says, “To take time to share, to listen and care.” This connects with this theme well because you need to take time to listen and care for your significant other because time is limited.  

This poem has many different forms shown. The author uses repetition by using the phrase “to love is to” in stanzas 1-4. The author is doing this to bring emphasis on the word “love” and this is showing the importance of what the author is trying to say about it. The author is doing this to bring attention that love between the two people is the main focus in this poem. The author repeats this phrase for the four stanzas and not the last one because for the beginning stanzas the author wants to show the examples he or she has and then for the last stanza displaying that they have now learned what the real and true meaning of love is. The author repeats this phrase, so the readers understand how important this is and showing them that this is the main focus throughout the entire poem.

In regard to the poems form it consists of 5 stanzas, the number of stanzas can have many meanings to the author and purposely do this to have the readers interrupt a connection. In relation to the poems form of 5 stanzas the book, “The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts” by Gary Chapman. This book could take in place of why the author decided to write only 5 stanzas. I connected these two items together because this book mentions the 5 love languages, this book talks about how the 5 love languages can help make a relationship stronger. I think this connects well because the poem talks about all the things that help keep relationships together. The 5 love languages are included as, words of affirmation, quality time, acts of services, gifts and touch. The poem has 5 stanzas and mentions all of the 5 love languages throughout the poem. In connection to the poem it says, “To love is to help and encourage with smiles and sincere words of praise, to take time to share,” this relates to the love languages, words of affirmation and quality time. Also, in the poem it says, “In tender, affectionate ways,” this can relate to the love language of acts of services, gifts or touch. In conclusion, the poem relates to the form because the poem consists of the 5 love languages throughout the whole poem. 

This poem presents the main topic of everyone’s lives and something that everyone in society craves to have in their life. Everyone talks about love, everyone wants to be loved, or to love someone else deeply. But in today’s society a lot of people begin to ask themselves what really is the meaning of love? Many individuals are conflicted on what the true meaning of love is and how it really feels to be loved the right way. In today’s society many people do not love the right way or are not being loved the right way. For example, in many relationships there is a lot of toxicity and “fake” love happening over and over. In many relationships, many individuals lack loyalty, trust and respect for one another. Most relationships end with one cheating on the other or one just simply falling out of love because they start getting “bored” of their partner. Over the years, the meaning of love has changed in many ways. Back then, relationships were more pure and “healthy”. In my opinion the main cause of the unhealthy forms of relationships are society’s expectations on individuals, most partners will become insecure and will have low self-esteem. They will begin to lose the positive outlooks on their relationship because this can begin to arise many trust issues within the relationship

Many other individuals would be interested in reading this poem and will also get drawn into it like I did. Like I said in the beginning, many people revolve themselves around the word “love”, it is in our daily lives and we hear this word wherever we go. No matter where we are and when the word “love” is all around us and there is no way we can go through life without this concept of love. Everyone in the world either loves someone or wants someone to love them. Love is the most popular and known thing in the entire world, I mean what is life without love? How would we even function without love? Love is the key to many things and many individuals would love to read a poem about love. The title of the poem itself speaks to many people, whenever someone sees the title, “The Meaning of Love” will instantly want to read it. The questions or concerns that go along with this poem is, many people have different views on love and many people enjoy and like different things. Not everyone is going to like to do the same activities with their significant other and many might often have a different definition of love. The question I built up while reading this is, how could everyone connect with this poem if everyone has a different view? If so, does this mean everyone’s view is more similar than we thought?