What is Love
Love is elusive but also ubiquitous. Some people believe in it, and some don’t. Some think they understand it, and others don’t think they do. The Greeks believed you could categorize it into different types:
- Eros – passionate.
- Philia – friendship.
- Agape – universal.
- Storge – familiar.
If you ask me, love more often than not is more complex than labels. They do help, though, like in some instances when you can’t understand or verbalize it yourself. Maybe not at that moment, and maybe not always correctly.
Storge
I know the love of family. I now know my mom loves me when she’s harsh and when she’s giving. However, when I was a child and scolded or put on punishment, it didn’t feel like love. It felt like her love had been melted away by some cruel corrosive lye, and gave sight to a skeletal vanitas (Latin for ‘vanity’) version of her. My childlike belief that love was fluffy and warm all the time broken.
Yet with the fickleness of a child and a few minutes of cartoons, it was all forgotten and forgiven. As I get older, I become more aware of myself, life’s hardships, and how it can be hard to deal with. Through it all, my mother is still a safe space where I can take off my mask and be that little girl again. No matter how happy, manic, sad, or fierce I can be, she is always there. Loving, teaching, patient, and punishing. Since I was first conceived, she was always with me, and I was always with her. I sometimes wonder if she takes off her mask sometimes and runs to her mother for comfort.
Phillia
I know the love of friendship; the ones that are immediate magnetism, the ones that fade away, and the ones that crash and burn. Of friends who start a little rickety but somehow work. A duo of oil and water. I know of being abandoned in decade-long friendships. Being forsaken for a fleeting heated touch of someone who should’ve been off limits.
Friendships that now feel like looking at the skyline from as far as the horizon allows. The bittersweet nostalgia and fond gazes, yet you can’t reach out to touch it, no matter if you see and remember it. The ones I gladly and gratefully still have, talking about everything, nothing, and anything in between. Even the parasocial ones!
Eros
I have an idea about romantic love. Whether it was purely based on physical attraction or if it did run deeper. I know it can be fleeting, nothing but a slight brush of dirt off your shoulder. Or it can feel like being buried alive, the weight of the dirt crushing your chest. Aching. Sometimes it’s just puppy love, nothing more. I know red flags can hide behind rose-tinted glasses. I know I don’t really know much about romantic love.
Storge, was it there?
One thing I do know is in every moment a veiled, Godly, inexplicable love can always be found. In passing moments with strangers; seeing an old couple holding hands or children laughing and running around the playground. Being in the woods on a beautiful day surrounded by chirps of birds and the crunch of sticks under hooves. Feeling nothing but joy. Love lurks in every crack, crevice, and cranny.
Even in one of the saddest moments in a person’s life. Even when my Papa at the ripe age of 92 lay in the ICU. Everything in there could be considered a universal form of love. The smell of antiseptic. Though no matter how pungent the smell, made it possible for him to have a sterile environment so we could visit.
The beeping of the machines was made to signify vitals are stable, and someone breathing. Allowed us to see our Papa, though he wasn’t as conscious as he had been just a week prior. All these things, whether or not created with the intention of love, did contribute to the universal love that trickled down to a more personal love.
As a family, we gathered around in a semi-circle of overflowing emotions that we all showed differently. While he was just in rehab, I didn’t know how to feel. He’d always been around and I let the naïve idea of not losing him coddle me. I knew better. But seeing him in that stale aseptic hospital bed, I was faced with a morbid reality check.
A dam broke, and I sobbed. The man who lived so vividly in stories my grandparents would tell us, again and again… and again. Laid a withered old man, mortal.
It Was, and It Is Eternal
The man who fell in love with the stars passed that same love down from granddaughter to great-granddaughter. He’s the reason I love the sweet heady smell of pipe smoke. Why I can curl up and enjoy any sci-fi movie you throw at me, especially the Alien series. Why I enjoy going to L.L. Bean even though I’m not very outdoorsy.
I loved the man that would bake fresh oatmeal raisin cookies and host Christmas. I loved the man from the stories of raising a wallaby on tour in New Guinea to ice fishing in Canada. That mighty and awesome man and sweet elder were the same person, not a caricature of a grandpa and not a tall tale.
Just a great man who left such an impact on everyone in that room that we were all brought to tears in some fashion. I don’t know if he was aware enough to remember each of us by name, but I do know he felt that love and closeness. I know he knew I was one of his granddaughters. With the way he gave the hardest grip he could muster and the piercing gaze while he did so. Without words, he showed that he loved us and knew he was loved. So I’m thankful to the man who’s the reason I can name a handful of constellations in the night sky.
A personal analogy for love: Some of the stars we see might not still be there anymore, but from our perspective, they still shine so brightly.
Written by AriAnna Rathers
Featured Image Courtesy of wakitu’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
First Image Courtesy of Allan Foster’s Flickr page – Creative Commons License
