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Okay, into the meat for today. Let’s talk love.
What is love? There are many ways to describe this ephemeral and yet universally known feeling.
First of all, I want to break this down into the capacity to feel love and the capacity TO love, as in the verb form. There’s the experience of love, as in the sensory or energetic presence with some form of “love.” Then there’s the agentic choice, or even commitment, to love. Both, to me, are important.
Further, love is such an amorphous word. It can mean many things to many people. Semantically, it’s difficult to really know what it is. The English dictionary definitions are so boring I won’t even merit sharing them. What I will share, though, are the Greek words.
The ancient Greeks identified several distinct types of love, each representing different aspects of human connection and affection. Here are the main categories:
Eros - Passionate, romantic love that overwhelms reason.
She caught sight of him across the agora, and suddenly the world tilted. Her heart hammered against her ribs as if trying to escape. "This is madness," she whispered to herself, but her feet were already moving toward him, drawn by something beyond logic or control.
Philia - Deep friendship between equals who share values and virtue.
"You see right through my pretenses," Marcus said, watching his friend's knowing smile. "Always have." They'd walked this path together for years, each challenging the other to be better, to think deeper. It was the kind of bond that made both men stronger, built on mutual respect and shared pursuit of wisdom.
Storge - Natural family love, born of familiarity and belonging.
The old woman's hands moved automatically, braiding her daughter's hair just as she had every morning for twenty years. No words needed - this was love as natural as sunrise, woven into the fabric of daily life. They belonged to each other in ways that required no explanation.
Agape - Universal, selfless love extending to all humanity.
Standing at the city gates, she watched the refugees stream past - strangers from distant lands, yet her heart opened to them as if they were her own children. "We are all connected," she murmured, pressing coins into weathered palms without expecting anything in return.
Philautia - Healthy self-love and self-knowledge.
"I know my flaws," he said quietly, "but I also know my worth." He'd spent years learning to speak to himself with the same kindness he'd show a dear friend. This wasn't arrogance - it was the quiet confidence that came from truly knowing oneself.
Xenia - Sacred hospitality love between host and guest.
The stranger's cloak dripped with rain, but she welcomed him as if he were family. "You are safe here," she said, offering bread and wine. In that moment, the ritual of hospitality transformed them both - strangers became sacred guests, bound by ancient obligations of care.
I really like the possibility that there are at least 12 ways of loving. Each of these can be an experience or an act.
I tell people that I love them all the time, and recently was challenged about that. Can I really love all those people?
For me, love is infinite. But time is finite. Energy is somewhere in the middle, depending on what one means by “energy.” So, there’s a balance required to love with all our hearts and souls.
I may need to balance Philautia with Eros when I feel an irresistible draw to a new lover but also recognize that to deeply love myself requires me to not stay up late. Or, I may feel the infinity of Agape when I look out at a radiant sunset while also recognizing a disconnection from my friend, who I love, but who doesn’t feel that same recognition. There, Philia might “require” of me to love my friend, but I might feel isolated in the separation of how we see life.
So, in short, it’s confusing. But I think exploring the meaning of love is important because otherwise we get lazy about how we’re loving, because we don’t actually know what it means.
Semantics are a HUGE part of my worldview. My idea of “semantics” is the fact that each person has a different subjective meaning associated with every word than every other person. Meaning that when we’re communicating, we might hear our friend say “I love you,” and think that they mean “I am romantically drawn to you,” when really they’re saying “I’m so grateful for your support.”
“I love you,” while a beautiful phrase, is also limited because it is such a vast expression. Language requires specificity to truly communicate its meaning… Unless, and this happens a lot too, “love” is used to represent the mystical, as in, ‘beyond words,’ meaning of love. The word love is poetry. It represents something that is beyond words.
So, even the breakdowns I’ve shared fall short of what is truly a thing that only poets and artists can harmonize with. We can’t ever truly know what love is, in the same way that many cultures have similar but different views on “God.”
I heard spirituality described as a disco ball once; we’re all looking at a lightly different refraction of light, but it’s all one ball. That’s kind of what life is. Each of us is our own unique part of a wholeness that transcends us and is us at the same time.
So, love then, maybe is the recognition of ourselves, others, God, lovers, and friends as that same wholeness. Maybe when we experience love, we’re experience a remembering of our unity. Maybe when we choose love, we’re choosing to re-unite ourselves as part of the same stardust and earth that is our universal ancestor. Maybe love is a recognition of belonging from soul to soul.
Maybe love is the answer. People have said it before. Maybe it just is.
Blessings and LOVE ;)
Faolan
PS. A couple blog posts ago, I wrote about my mom and my childhood. I just want to shout her out today and tell her that I LOVE HER and am incredibly grateful that she’s my mom. <3
Did something in this piece move you? I’d genuinely love to hear what landed. Feel free to share your reflections in the comments or reply directly.
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