Love.

Popularly, Love is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. Depending on context, love can have a wide variety of intended meanings, including sexual attraction. Psychologists and religious teachings, however, define love more precisely, as living for the sake of another, motivated by heart-felt feelings of caring, affection, and responsibility for the other's well-being.

The ancient Greeks described love with a number of different words: Eros was impassioned, romantic attraction; philia was friendship; xenia was kindness to the guest or stranger. Agape love, which the Greeks defined as unconditional giving, became the keystone of Christianity, where it is exemplified in Christ's sacrificial love on the cross. Some notion of transcendental love is a salient feature of all the world's faiths. "Compassion" (karuna) in Buddhism is similar to agape love; it is represented by the bodhisattva, who vows not to enter Nirvana until he has saved all beings. Yet love encompasses all these dimensions, eros as well as agape.

Perhaps the best context in which to develop such love is the family, where the love that is given and received is of various kinds. Closest to agape love is the sacrifice and investment that parents willingly give on behalf of their children. Children, in turn, offer their parents filial devotion and respect that grows more profound with the passing years. Siblings care for and help one another in various ways. The love between spouses is a world in itself. Grandparents bear a profound regard for their grandchildren. All of these types of love have their distinctive features.

Love is universally desired, but love can be fraught with infidelity, deceit, possessiveness, unrealistic expectations, jealousy, and hate. Love, in fact, is at the root of much pain and conflict in the world. Marriages break down when the passion of romance cools. Religions like Buddhism and Roman Catholicism regard family love as incompatible with the higher life. Nevertheless, people still long for "true love," love that never fails. Psychologists and character educators hold that much of the heartbreak of failed love could be avoided by education about the nature of love, and by cultivating the self to be able to love well.