Love

as promised, i am taking a stab and writing a little treatise on love. throughout my many years i have felt different aspects of love. familial love, brotherly love, elderly love, obsessive love, emotional and erotic love, and many more. the many facets of love, all or them real and genuine, would often contradict each other. and thus frankly, i cannot tell you what love is. i cannot tell you what love means. but i can tell you what love isn't, and what love does not mean. and from those excluded impossibilities, i can tell you what love should encompass, what it should include and what beauty it should hold therein.

this very question had been asked by the ancient greeks aeons ago. modern people would probably scorn at that notion, dispensing love as a mere personal taste and affection, and a spur of "feelings". while love may include those affections and feelings, do you not think that love is very limited and dry if that is all that love means? if love means exactly that, would we not use "love" and "feelings" interchangably as synonyms? but no, we don't. and that very fact points to the obvious truth that love is much much more than mere feelings and affections.

in c. s. lewis' book "the four loves", he attempts to reemphasize the ancient greek notion of love. for the ancients, love has four main facets: philia, storge, eros, agape. it is a comprehensive and umbrella encompassment of love, rather than a linguistic and succinct definition. the ancients know that love is not a matter for dialectic discussions. it is more or less a subject of empirical experiences. and so, the greeks outlines four possible types of experiences and relationships that would incur that notion of love. and these four types of experiences then become what is known as the four pillars of love. they are pillars because a long-lasting and genuine love must have each of the four facets within. they are fundamental and reinforce each other.. as i shall discuss in the following..

philia is a love of familiarity. while it can also be used in the context of "i love chemistry" or "i love my pillow", it is usually used in the context of knowing a person and having an affection towards each other because of that habitual understanding. it is a love that is built on time, habits, understanding, and thus imply mutual respect and tolerance.

storge is brotherly/sisterly love. it is a love that is founded on metaphysical bonds. it is a love that is shared because of a formal state of relationship (including friendship). that is to say, a person loves her boyfriend exclusively because he is her boyfriend, and therefore no others. storge thus imply fidelity and bonds, followed by a set code of responsibilities and ethics.

eros is the facet of love that is most comprehensive for modern people. eros is the emotional affections, the burning feelings and passions (well, the ancient greeks actually meant sexual love by eros), between a couple. while it signifies the feelings and passions, it also implies the frail nature of such carnal affections. this is why storge and philia preceeds eros, providing it a structural and formal basis. without these basis, men and women are no different from beasts on all fours, hunting for or flirting to the next prey for mating. this is exactly why i abhor the concept of regarding love as a mere affection, and then proceed to measure every relationship by a matter of "feelings". it is only a small part of love, and definitely not the entire context of love.

agape is the greatest love of all, according to the greeks. originally intended to decribe the love of the city state or nation, agape is the love for which a person is willing to take up arms and sacrifice himself. in medieval era, this facet of "selfless, self-giving love" is used to describe the theological love that Christ has shown. it is then extended to describe a devoted love, wherein a person is willing to sacrifice herself and become one in spirit with love itself. it is a concept that had eluded most modern people...

in a nutshell, love should encompass all four facets: philia, the love of familiarity and understanding; storge, the love from bonds and fidelity and trust; eros, the exclusive feelings and affections between two people; and agape, the selfless devotion each person renders to another, which fulfills the physical kinship or relationship with a metaphysical commitment. so.. next time when you think you are in love, think again. can you envision yourself sharing all these four facets with the person you are looking at? was it a mere familiarity? was it just simple kinship? was it mere feelings and a spur of passion? think clearly, before you wake up and realized you have erred, and have permanently marred your conscience as well as someone's heart.