Published
5 years agoon
By
FrimpongEverybody including God the Almighty had used the word “I love you”, and it will still be used till the end of time.
Love is predominantly a universal phenomenon that characterize admiration, affection and appreciation to anything one is enthused about.
As explained by Lisa Smith, a poet and women advocate, love is a variety of feelings, emotions and attitudes which goes beyond just being physically interested in someone. There is a strong emotional attachment that goes along with it.
Emotional attachment becomes inevitable when it is driven by specific ingredient that is moving one person to like or admire the other person of the opposite sex.
The great African American freedom fighter and Civil Right Leader, Martin Luther King Jnr once said that, “love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend, and the fact is that, love is one of most powerful thing in the world that can change us and help us to be much better”.
Succinctly and cogently true.
When narrowed down, love between man and woman is always shrouded in myths regardless of the status of the actors.
It has predominantly been so as a result of subsequent outcomes of recent marriages.
Fundamentally, types of love, its meanings and characteristics has been defined in divers ways by pundits, but for now, let’s focus on seven of them namely………..
To help us understand deeply the intentions of people when they express love to others, let’s get behind the details of the above characteristics to know what they are made of.
is a sexual passionate love, and it is the type most akin to, our modern construct of romantic love. In Greek mythology (where it originated from), is a fun of madness brought about by one of cupid’s arrows. The arrow breaks us and we fall “in love” as did Paris and Helen, leading to the trojan war and the downfall of troy and much of the Greek army.
In modern times, Eros had been amalgamated with the broader life force, a fundamentally blind process of striving for survival and reproduction.
The great Aristotle believed that a person can bear goodwill to another for one of three reasons……
* That he is useful.
* That he is pleasant.
* That he is good.
And these are rational virtues of friendship funded on goodness that are associated not only with mutual benefit, but also with companionship, dependability and trust.
For Plato, the best kind of friendship is that which lovers have for each other.
It is a PHILIA born out of EROS and that in turn feeds back into Eros to strengthen and develop it. By Plato’s analogy, there’s powerful argument that, the urge to do something for someone however unconditional as it appeared, is driven by an enforceability of the person being the opposite sex.
The gender parity serves as impetus to reciprocate or part with something physically or kind in admiration of the person.
Significantly, it simply means that philia love, however selfless it appeared, is transformational from the position of lust for a possession of, unto a shared desire for a higher level of understanding of the self, the other, and the world. In a nutshell, philia transforms Eros from a lust for possession into an impulse for philosophy.
Real friends seeks together, to live truer, and fuller lives by relating to each other authentically and teaching each other about the limitations of their beliefs and the defects in their character which are far greater source of error than mere rational confusion.
More broadly, is the fondness born out of familiarity or dependency and, unlike Eros and philia, doesn’t hang on our personal qualities.
People in early stages of salubrious relationship often expects unconditional storge, but find only the need and dependency of Eros, and if they are lucky, the maturity and fertility of philia, given enough time, Eros tends to mutate into storge.
Also called “charity” by Christian thinkers, agape can be said to encompass the modern concept of ALTRUISM, defined as unselfish concern for the welfare of others.
Recent studies links altruism to number of benefits. In the short term, altruism leaves us with a euphoric feeling – the so-called “helper’s high”.
In the longer term, it is associated with better mental and physical health, as well as longevity. At the social level, altruism serves as a signal of cooperative intentions, and also of resource availability and so of mating or partnering potential.
It also opens up a dept account, encouraging beneficiaries to reciprocate with gifts and favors that may be of much greater value to us than those with which we feel or able to part.
More importantly, altruism or agape, helps to build and maintain psychological, social and indeed environmental fabric that shields, sustains and enriches us.
Loving someone, significantly warrants an action, an advancement that shows the intents, heart desire and response.
Does he or she really meant what he/she said ?
To be continued!
Sammy Ladzekpo
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