What About Love? Don't You Want Someone To Care About You...

Love, love, love...

I can just hear Jerry Seinfield saying that.

So the Greeks were really geeked about labeling everything, and in all their wisdom, decided to categorize and label love. From what I remember, there were four types of love if you were Greek. Just so you know...they were wrong.

(Go ahead, call me arrogant, I'm use to it.)

Ice cream.

Yeah, when I talk love, baby, I talk ice cream. How's that for some Greek philosophy?

I think love is like ice cream flavors. There's a million of them, and every one of them is slightly different than the other, but they all share common features. So whether I love my friend Susy or my friend Paul or my mom, there is a commonality among all of these. Yet, at the same time, each love is particular and peculiar to the individuals involved. There will never be another love like the love I have for Susy. It is a Headless - Susy love (not that she is headless, mind you...!). There will never be another love like the love I have for Paul. Only Paul and I can have that love. Only "Tin Roof Sundae" works for my mom and I... And so it goes.

Now, you wonder how or if that relates to the Greek loves. Well, I'll tell you. I think the Greek loves are very broad categories (though still not broad enough) that are occasionally useful when you need a handle to hold on to on the journey of love, but other than that, they are at best, inadequate - at worst, stifling.

I have never been able to say, "I agape you." Or, "I phileo you 50% and eros you 50%."

Love is organic and alive. It is a living thing between people. It is a child conceived of relating and talking and walking and working, and like a child, who can say what it will be tomorrow or next year? It will laugh and it will long. It will sulk and it will play. It will not be the same in the next minute - you will wash the dishes and put up the groceries and turn around to look at it and exclaim, "Oh my! How you have grown!" And just like a child, if you try to control it or own it, you will press the life out of it and find yourself with nothing but a shell.

And this popular notion that agape love is the highest love - that love given without expectations is the highest form of love - this, I whole heartily disagree with. Agape is charity, and charity is love in a sorry situation - a situation where a person who, though he was formed in the fires of love, is unwilling or unable to grasp life and instead slowly dies under the tearful eyes of the Lover.

Love is greatest when it flows back and forth - when it finds it life in the giving and the taking - when you meet my passion with your passion. Indeed, Jesus, in his final hours, said, "I no longer call you servants, but friends."

We are called to high things.

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 8/09/2004 10:25:00 PM