Paul Messam, Contributor

What is love? Is it an extension of 'spirit tek' and treat good? Jamaicans told Outlook how they feel about love.

Ms Williams, Mandeville:

"Love is a feeling that can be seen, felt or expressed through physical emotions. It may be a kiss, it may be felt through a touch or seen through a smile."

Omar Thomas, guidance counsellor, Kingston:

"Love is a feeling that you feel that you have never ever felt or experienced before. It involves more giving than receiving, and giving up a part of you to someone you enjoy being with."

Joyce Mead-Anser, Papine High School:

"Love is an emotion that you feel towards a person. When you love someone dearly, you look beyond his faults no matter what the person does or says. When the person is happy, you are happy too."

Samantha Edwards, London, England:

"Ultimately, love is acceptance. Accepting the things about the person that you cannot change. You have to love yourself first to understand the other person. You must be loved in order to love somebody that way. Love is not always sacrificing or giving someone what he needs BUT what is good for him."

Locksley Satchell, mechanical engineer:

"It's simple, love is caring, sharing and understanding each other. If you don't care and share you don't love, as easy at that."

Deloris Clarke, nurse:

"Love is helping someone along the way. It is giving yourself to each other without fear or limitations."

Janet 'Fishe' Grey, fishmonger:

"Love is companionship. Love is caring about the person as you care for yourself. Love is not sex alone."

Gerald G. Jampolsky:

"Love is letting go of fear. The underlying truth for all of us is that the essence of our being is love. It asks no question. Its natural state is one of extension and expansion, not comparison and measurement."

Nathaniel Bradon, The Psychology of Romantic Love:

"The concept of love as an important value and the idea of it is a passionate spiritual attachment, based on mutual admiration between one human being and another."

Barbara Lovenheim, Beating the Marriage Odds:

"Love is filled with wild emotional swings. 'I want you, but, I can't have you' and 'I can't live with you, but I can't live without you' are common-place themes in many popular songs. Love, we're told, is supposed to hurt. Pain is cleansing and even purifying. If love doesn't make us suffer, how real can it be?"