„If we could understand what love is, we would stop looking for it,” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once wrote. And yet, we're looking for it our whole lives.
In the gaze of a child, in the hand of a loved one, in the faithful wag of a dog's tail, in the scent of Grandma's old house, in the sound of a favourite song. We search for it, because without it, everything else loses its meaning.
Love is not a feeling. It is a state of being.
Love as life energy
Scientists have been trying to measure it for decades. In the 1990s, the Institute of Mathematics of the Heart (HeartMath Institute) in California conducted a series of experiments which demonstrated that the electromagnetic field of the human heart is up to 5,000 times stronger than that of the brain and can be registered several metres away from the body. When a person experiences states of love, gratitude, and compassion, this field becomes coherent, harmonious, even „musical”. When they experience fear, anger, or hatred, it becomes chaotic.
In 2018, the results of the long-term Harvard Grant Study were published – one of the longest studies on happiness in the history of science (it has been running since 1938). After analysing the lives of 724 men for nearly 80 years, scientists came to one unambiguous conclusion:
Happiness is love. Full stop.
Not success. Not money. Not fame.
Love.
Robert Waldinger, the current director of the project, said in a famous TED Talk watched by over 45 million people: „The great predictor of health and happiness in old age is not genes, …
