Essay #1: The Meaning of Love

The ancient Greeks had three major words for love, nomenclature that is still relevant in Greek and all languages today. The three words and their meaning are as follows:


Agape  >>>>>   universal love--- the love for all humankind


Philia   >>>>>     the love for significant individuals in our lives, most especially members of our families and our dearest friends; by extension, we draw upon this storehouse of love in dealing with all human beings whom we encounter individually on our daily pathways.


Eros     >>>>>     this is romantic love between two people, love that entails great personal respect for our companions, partners, and mates; for whom we feel attraction that includes some level of sexuality.


Love should be the guiding force of our lives. We should cultivate love for all of our fellow human beings in the spirit of agape. The main themes and activities of our lives should be a concern to move humanity forward toward greater happiness and satisfaction for people as individual members of the human family and the human family as a whole.


We should find within ourselves, therefore, abundant sources of altruism (behavior that contributes to the healing and nurturing of our fellow human beings) and empathy (the ability to project ourselves into the life situations of other people, feeling what they feel, so that we may respond with appropriate action in our love and concern for them).


This is what Christ did so naturally during his earthly sojourn and what St. Paul articulated so well in Corinthians I, Chapter 13.


Informed by this universal spirit of love, we should express philia for those with whom we interact most closely on a daily basis. A great many of our thoughts, words, and deeds should be full of the love that we feel for our family members, friends, and other individuals whom we meet with great frequency in our daily lives. We should listen carefully to what they have to say, feel empathically what they are feeling, and do all that we can to maximize their chances for happiness.


If we are the happy and secure people in the manner that will be detailed in other essays of this series, we will be able to minimize our own selfish desires and ephemeral wants so as to consider the needs of others. Secure in our own abiding happiness, we should be willing to defer gratification of our own preferences for the most compelling and important needs of others among our family, friends, and close associates.


The forms of love expressed as agape and philia should also inform our responses to those for whom we feel the love of eros. This love for our special companion or mate certainly includes sexual attraction, but such attraction only becomes love when we include that person with whom we are romantically enamored among those in the human family--- those for whom we feel agape and those among the individuals for whom we feel philia.


Authentic eros should lead us to care for our romantic companions much as we care for other people: We should listen carefully; empathetically understand their fondest hopes and most important life goals; and nurture them in a way that reconciles their own best interests with our own.


Eros entails a magical and exciting passion but also should be accompanied by a realistic and abiding concern for the dignity of the two people involved, as individuals and as a loving unit. People who live in the spirit of this sort of eros maintain individual dignity; manifest fervent respect and deep empathy for the recipient of this special form of love; maintain love for the significant people for whom philia is felt; and continue to feel an internalized, in-the-gut sense of agape for all humankind.


Genuine eros never interferes with, but rather makes more powerful and more heartfelt, the love that we feel for other important people in our daily lives and for all of those who inhabit our planet.


For every action that we undertake, we should ask first, “Is this a loving response most appropriate for the person or people involved?”


We should include among the loved our very selves, for until we respect and love ourselves we cannot show genuine love for our fellows.


But secure in our own identities and knowledgeable of our own authentic aspirations, we should ever seek to put aside the selfish and the evanescent desires of instant gratification in loving responses to the needs of our fellow human beings.  For over the long term, their best interests are also our own, and acting in their welfare improves life for the human family of which we are a part.