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Love is our highest value, what we all crave
and what we believe makes us fundamentally
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human, but it is also the source of considerable
anxiety. Chiefly, we worry whether we are
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entirely normal because it frequently feels
as if we are not experiencing love the way
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we should be. Society is subtly highly prescriptive
in this regard. It suggests that to be a decent
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person, we should all be within sexual relationships
and furthermore, that within these, we should
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‘love’ in a very particular way: we should
be constantly thrilled by our partner’s
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presence, we should long to see them after
every absence, we should crave to hold them
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in our arms, to kiss and be kissed by them
and – most of all – want to have sex with
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them every day or so. In other words, we should
follow the script of Romantic ecstasy throughout
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our lives. This is beautiful in theory and
hugely punitive in practice. If we’re going
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to define love like this and peg the idea
of normality accordingly, then most of us
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will have to admit to ourselves (with considerable
embarrassment) that we don’t know much about
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love – and therefore don’t qualify as
decent, sane, or normal people. We’ve created
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a cult of love radically out of line with
most of our real experiences of relationships.
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This is where the Ancient Greeks can help.
They realised early on that there are many
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kinds of love, each with their respective
virtues and seasons – and that a good society
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requires us to append a correct vocabulary
to these different states of the heart, lending
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each one legitimacy in the process. The Greeks
anointed the powerful physical feelings we
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often experience at the start of a relationship
with the word ‘eros’ (ἔρως) . But
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they knew that love is not necessarily over
when this sexual intensity wanes, as it almost
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always does after a year or so in a relationship.
Our feelings can then evolve into another
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sort of love they captured with the word ‘philia’
(φιλία) normally translated as ‘friendship’
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though the Greek word is far warmer, more
loyal and more touching than its English counterpart;
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one might be willing to die for ‘philia’.
Aristotle recommended that we outgrow eros
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in youth, and then base our relationships
– especially our marriages – on a philosophy
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of philia. The word adds an important nuance
to our understanding of a viable union. It
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allows us to see that we may still love even
when we are in a phase that our own, more
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one-sided vocabulary fails to value. The Greeks
had a third word for love: agape (ἀγάπη).
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This can be best translated as a charitable
love. It’s what we might feel towards someone
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who has behaved rather badly or come to grief
through flaws of character – but for whom
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we still feel compassion. It’s what a God
might feel for his or her people, or what
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an audience might feel for a tragic character
in a play. It’s the kind of love that we
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experience in relation to someone’s weakness
rather than their strength. It reminds us
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that love isn’t just about admiration for
virtues, it’s also about sympathy and generosity
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towards what is fragile and imperfect in us.
Having these three words to hand – eros,
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philia and agape – powerfully extends our
sense of what love really is. The Ancient
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Greeks were wise in dividing the blinding
monolith of love into its constituent parts.
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Under their tutelage, we can see that we probably
have far more love in our lives than our current
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vocabulary knows how to recognise.
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did you know that The School Of Life is actually a place?
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Ten places in fact. Campus' all over the world from Melbourne to London, Taipie to Istanbul.
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With classes and books and much more. Please click on the link below to explore more.