There is a difference between like and love. I used to be puzzled about the difference between these two words back in the day. I remember hearing a saying in middle school, "Liking is wantonness, while loving is restraint", and I thought it was so profound at the time. Although liking and loving are both expressions of one's affection for another person or an object, there is a slight difference between the two.
If we use weight to distinguish between liking and love, then liking is light, while love is heavy. Liking is the lightness of youth, I like you, so I can jump on you without any hesitation, even if on the mountain of knives, down to the sea of fire, as long as for you, will not hesitate to do so; and love is the stability of maturity, love implies responsibility, because I love you very much, so I have to do things with more concern, I not only have to work hard for our present, but also have to consider for the future.
Love is both heavy and silent. This reminds me of Grandpa and Grandma, who used to know each other by matchmaking, and it can be said that they didn't even know each other before they got married. Between the older generation, they probably wouldn't have the roguishness of the young, nor would they hang on to love. Grandpa loved fish and spicy food, so Grandma often made fish with a little spicy flavor. I remember when I was a kid and my parents went back to my grandmother's house to dine, my grandmother's cooking can be delicious. Usually, I would eat half a bowl of rice and call out that I was full, but at my grandmother's house I could eat three bowls (the rice was not full). I was able to eat three bowls of rice at my grandmother's house (the rice wasn't full). When Grandpa left, he probably took Grandma's cooking skills with him. When I went back to Grandma's house for dry rice again, I had to struggle to clean the bowl of white rice. Now that Grandma is also very old, if there are latecomers in the family, most of them are also the latecomers who cook.
In love, love is a little deeper than fondness. In junior high school, a couple in the class was discovered by the teacher, so the language teacher in the classroom, said that the current like is not love, you are still too young to experience love. (Turns out I'm still pretty nosy, and I've pretty much forgotten what my middle school teacher taught us, but I remember especially well the teacher's willingness to use class to talk off-topic.) I only have the girl's contact info because we were roommates, but we don't contact each other, except to know that she's better looking than she used to be. Liking when you're young is a little more innocent, and honestly it's not necessarily much less than adult love at this time, it's just lacking the precipitation of life experience.
Generally speaking, we can say we like anything as long as we have a good feeling about it. If I don't have a date, I can like a lot of people at the same time, I can like a character in a book, I can like a puppy I meet by chance, I can like a flower on the side of the road. These are all likes. It's a normal thing to have a fondness for certain things in the world, and having a fondness doesn't necessarily mean love. Nowadays, the way of expression is much more straightforward than before, and occasionally exaggerated, most people say "love", actually "Like. ". For example, if you see a beauty on the internet, you might get a bunch of wife swipes in the comments section, and there will be people who just say they love it. Honestly, that's more of a like and not quite up to the level of love.
Whether it is like, or love, is a manifestation of having a good feeling. Personally, I feel that it's more important to be loved by one person than to be liked by a group of people, and it's even happier if that person who loves you, is also the person you love.