Choose Love :: Eros, Philos, Agape

There was a fantastic tee shirt that sweet Sheila Wilson wore during Pam's art journaling class last weekend. It was a plain white tee with the words, "choose love" screened in a loose, painterly way with a black/gray/inky ... and totally rockin' sensibility. It spoke to me so much that most of the day, I made pages inspired by that shirt. Like this one.

The topic of love has been on my mind a lot ... and I've had some interesting conversations about it with a few friends as of late, which includes discussions about the types of love that exist. There are Greek words related to different types of love ... the origins of these words are not rooted in religion per se, though some of the concepts (particularly "agape") have become embraced by some religions and therefore synonymous to religion in many people's minds. But that's neither here nor there.


The more I read about the types of love, the more I understand and the less I understand. It's like reading philosophy ... you read a passage and start nodding and saying to yourself "Oh yes! That's so true. I totally undrstand and agree ... with the point about ... er ... um ... wait a minute ... what did that passage say again?"

In an instant it is simple. In another, it is complex.

So the Greek words that have been discussed by philosophers about love are ... Eros, Philos, and Agape (and also Storge ... though I think the first three are the ones that get talked about the most ... or at least the three that I like to focus on). So much has been written about these words ... but if I had to choose single words to describe the way I classify them in my mind, they would be as follows:

Eros :: lust
Philos :: friendship
Agape :: unconditional

So when messages come to us like "choose love" or "all you need is love" or "I love you" or "that's true love," or "that's not love," or "love kills slowly," or "love never fails" or any other phrase that invoke the word ... it makes me wonder a lot about what kind of love the messenger is intending, what kind of love we are interpreting, and on and on and on.

There are other words that relate to the facets of love, that are all part of the mix, right? Here are just a few:

attraction
admiration
philanthropy
friendship
esteem
crush
passion
regard
charity
respect

Love. Life. We all go through it. We all experience facets of it ... and sometimes what we experience is understood by others. Sometimes it's not. Actually, a lot of times it's not. But I've come to be ok with that. All I know is that I know it when I feel it.

Comments

[donnalee]

and storge...the natural love between mother & child. blest be ;D