"Love" Language

North American society is obsessed with "love".

To bad we have such a poor understanding about what it means.

In part, I blame the word.  We use the same word for our spouse, our mother, our best friend, a TV show, chocolate ...  But if we ask anyone if our feeling is the same for all these people and things, the answer would be "no!".  To make it more confusing, so much media attention is put on forms of "love" that are romantic or sexually motivated, it becomes easy to assume that this is the only and most important form of love.  Furthermore, there are deeper nuances to the concept, idea and experience of love that are hard for the English language to pinpoint.  Never mind.  Most of our English poetry would disappear if writers like Shakespeare didn't spend so much time grappling with the word "love".

Here's a Canadian band's exploration of the problem:

The Greeks have 5 main terms for love, each clearly defined.

1. Storge(στοργήstorgē[4]) refers to the type of love between a parent and a child.  It implies that one is dependent and the other is the provider.  When there is no more dependency, then it is no longer Storge.
2. Philia(φιλίαphilía[3]) is a general form of love that grows over time through familiarity and shared experience, like friendship or your relationship with a comfort food.  Between people, it requires equality, loyalty and virtue rather than passion.  The city Philadelphia wanted to be known as the "city of brotherly love".
3. Éros(ἔρωςérōs[2]) is about passion and longing, attraction and intimacy.  In English, we might call it chemistry or spark.  It does not imply a sexual connection, but it does require a strong emotional impact when near the object of affection.  Plato tried to define a subset of eros that allowed for the love or adoration of a person but did not involve romantic or physical attraction.  Like recognizing and loving someone's deep inner beauty.  This has come to be called Platonic love and I think it is best demonstrated by the relationship between an artist and his or her muse.
4. Mania is obsession.  In English, we frequently use the word "love" interchangeably with obsession, perhaps to justify our behaviours.  Think of all the women who were "in love" with Paul McCartney during "Beatlemania".  Yesterday I learned the word "Twihards", which refers to those obsessed with the Twilight series.
5. Agápe(ἀγάπηagápē[1]) is unconditional, or pure love.  It is static unlike eros, which may come and go in waves, or philia which grows over time.  It does not require anything from the beloved, such as dependency in storge, or strong feelings in eros.  It is frequently translated as "charity".  This voluntary one-sided form of love also allows for an agape of one's enemies.  In its purest form, it is associated as a Godly form of love.  In the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13 is a whole chapter dedicated to explaining the concept of agape.

I often wonder if English-speaking society would be clearer if we had a Greek (and perhaps other languages) vocabulary to explain how we felt.  A man tells his date that he feels eros for her, and she responds that she feels eros too, but it's Platonic.  A parent sees his children growing up and decides to work on transforming his storge for his kids into a philia relationship.  Your neighbour has agape for terrorists and you are content that it is not mania.

*****

Speaking of poetry, has anyone tried reading Persian mystic love poems?  You may want to try learning Persian language first.  Many of the subtleties and nuances, like how God is lover is wine, are lost in translation.