Prompt A1: Then

Right now one of my favorite songs is "Then" by Brad Paisley. Even though it is written from a man's perspective, I can relate to the message of the song. The message is basically no matter how much I love you right now, my love for you will always grow, because I thought I loved you at a past moment in time, but that love doesn't compare to the love I have for you now. Of course the song is a lot more poetic. The chorus of the song is extremely meaningful:
"And now you're my whole life; now you're my whole world. I just can't believe the way I feel about you, girl. Like a river meets the sea, stronger than it's ever been.We've come so far since that day, And I thought I loved you then."
It is such a powerful song to me and it helps me to try to explain the way I feel about my husband. I remember the first time I heard the song. It was on the radio right after Brad Paisley sang it on American Idol. I was driving to work, and I actually cried in my car (and yes, I am an emotional female, but that doesn't negate the point that the song is powerful). I thought about the way I feel about my husband. I thought I loved him when we got engaged, but that doesn't even compare to the the love I felt for him the day that we got married and the joy entwined in that day. Or the way I feel about him today while he is sitting on the couch reading and I am writing this. I feel more love for him than I could have ever imagined. Forget the love I thought I experienced in high school. This is the real deal. The song finishes this way:
"We'll look back someday, at this moment that we're in, and I'll look at you and say,'and I thought I loved you then.'"
One of the most significant words in this song is love, and the basis of the song. Love is something that can't ever truly be defined. The love I feel for my husband is different than the love my friend feels for her husband. The love I will feel for my future children will be different from the love for I feel for him as well. How I feel about my family, or about my friends, or the kids I teach in the nursery, they are all different kinds of love that can't be described. Even my love for my husband is ever changing. As the song describes, someday I will look back at the way I felt about the amazing man that I married and love him more than I ever dreamed possible. It is something that has to be felt and experienced. What is true love? How can it possibly be described. Some say it is wanting the other person to be happy regardless of your happiness. That is a good definition, but I don't think it really encompasses all that love entails.
In the Oxford English Dictionary there are 4 definitions for love, 2 that define love as a noun and 2 that define love as a verb. Surely this a convincing factor in my claim that love is virtually undefinable. Especially because as I mentioned earlier, there are so many different kinds of love. I love my country, I love my job, I love my nieces and nephews, I love my house, I love shoes, I love water, the list goes on and on. How can I claim I love all of these things? They are all so different. Is it something I don't want to live without? That could definitely fit into the definition. Are they things I have a fondness for? Yes, that too. My point is, love is something that has to be felt to be understood even slightly, and only in the feeling do I truly know the definition.

45 minutes