An Amateur's Thoughts on Love

 I am not a linguist.  I use words.  I understand the common usages. But I’m no linguist.

 Also, I don’t know to any real degree any foreign language.

 With all that in mind, I have still concluded that the English language is very lacking in certain areas, including “love.” 

 To understand what is meant when one uses the word “love,” you must consider cues.  Cues like tone of voice, circumstances, gestures, posture, facial expression, and the history between whoever is in the conversation.  But only “love” is used.

 I have heard that Greek contains at least three words for different kinds of love.  Eros is romantic love; philia is brotherly or friendship-based love; and agape is supposed to be love of God, or the all-consuming love for another person.  (Frequently, the first is taken for the third.)  But I’m thinking that even Greeks have to explain – by other words, by the general cues to language, exactly what they mean.

 Inuit and related languages are supposed to contain 40 to 50 words for “snow.”  That’s natural, for snow is a part of their environment, and they need to know what kind of snow they are talking about.  For example, whether a snowmobile can get through depends on whether the snow is fine or with large crystals, the ice content, whether it is wet snow or dry snow, and probably other conditions I have never thought about.  But they need it; snow is all around.

 Now, Arabic is supposed to contain 99 words for “love.”  That’s what I’m talking about – A precise word for a full description of the love that we are talking about.

 But wait a minute – Isn’t “love” a part of OUR environment?  Why do we restrict ourselves to one word?

 What kind of words do we need?  I think we need words describing:

 The love between romantic lovers.

 The love for Deity.

 The love of your children.

 The love of children in general.

 The love for animals.

 The love of Humanity.

 The love of comrades in arms.

 The love of comrades in other fields.  I know that all people in the responder community feel great love for some of the people they have worked with.  Don’t believe me?  Drop in on a responder's funeral and see how many people are there.

 Brotherly/sisterly love – Maybe one word for your legal brothers/sisters and another for people who have no close DNA-based relationship.  I have one living brother in the first sense; and countless sisters and brothers in the second.

 Now, if you think that list is in some sort of order, maybe in the order of importance that I place on them, you are wrong.

 I don’t think so.  I believe with precisely zero research to back me up, that each kind of love can be experienced and expressed with the same level of commitment.

 When I say “Love you, brother,” I really mean it – in my sense.  I’m comfortable with that.  When I tell my very close friends “I love you,” they do know how I mean it.  Let’s see, I’ve used it twice in letters or emails today to ladies I know, and once to a lady I talked to on the phone.  Each knows what I mean.

 But if you don’t know me, when I say “I love you,” unless you are present and observe all of those cues and can correctly interpret the cues, you will not have a tip nor a clue what I’m really describing. 

 Love is also ever-changing.  It gets better or more intense, maybe over time and maybe over only a short time.  Ditto when it gets worse or less intense.  Not only do you have to interpret love once, you have to do it again and again with the same people.

 Perhaps all we can do is use “Love you (insert name)”, “Love you, (Brother or Sister)”, just an “I love you” or even signing off with “Love, Roger” is all we are permitted to do.

 In a time where we seem to be emphasizing differences (and even creating false differences because we like conflict for the “joy” of conflict), wouldn’t it be nice to focus on all manner of love?

 

 

Note:  Yup, this is a whole lot different from most of my writing.  And I have to tell you that I have no idea where this post came from.  But I had to write it and had to write it in the first person.  It might be the direction of God, although I don’t have much of a history of direct and unambiguous communications from the Deity.  Maybe it is just “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.”  But I had to write this.