Categories create order, and keep things in
perspective. However, there are certain false generalizations which lead many to confusion and pain. Defining love simply as an
emotion is one of these such errors.
We live on our emotions, and are driven by the impulses we feel. Anger, pain, affection, and other feelings seem to function as our instincts. We can learn to control or suppress them, but they are always present.
Love has never been something as fickle as a passing feeling. If you truly love someone, you are driven to sacrifice for this person, sometimes at your own loss, and do many things which go against your instinctive emotions. Sometimes, love must endure pain and hatred to complete itself. There is no object of jealousy or grief beyond itself. Love is, at once, the ultimate realization and subsequent death of all emotions. It strives to unite our humanity with something higher.
We tell ourselves we are less than what we are in an effort to become satisfied with mere emotions. And we do fool ourselves, trading one emotion with another until we grow too tired of temporal satisfaction. Love is satisfied with itself, though.
Emotions are only the beginning.