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Today, I m going to talk about love; a bit intellectually. Yeah, you read it right… Intellectually. I am not going to rant about aunties and uncles and our whole society.
When a child starts understanding the world, the question that bugs him from the very beginning is, who do you love the most? Even when the little human doesn’t know about his feelings, we ask them to choose if they like mama or papa better. Sometimes, I wonder if our society even recognizes the emotion itself. Because every likeness, infatuation, crush is not supposed to be called ‘love’.
Let me begin by telling you the difference between the emotions and feelings that are similar to love but are not.
In adolescence, with all the hormonal rush and zero information about our feelings, we fall for ‘the fault in our stars’ type stories. In the name of suspense, we read Sydney Sheldon who is pretty much erotic for young minds. Twilight Saga then Fifty Shades of Grey, after reading all these my idea of love has been changing, what it must be doing to young minds, one can only wonder. Even in cartoons, every kid has a love interest, nothing is platonic from Doraemon to Disney cartoons. Life is at loss without somebody to have sex with (it’s not my idea of life just what media is teaching these days to our kids).
I do agree love is most powerful emotion in this world but it has its type from ancient Romans, and still, we don’t know about them. Ancient Romans were 9 century B.C, they studied about this emotion and learn that love has eight different types. No, not with the same person but yes, we can love everyone around us.
1۔ EROS:
EROS is romantic passionate and sexual in nature (yes, the only kind of love we think of now a day).
2۔ PHILIA:
It is a strong friendship (not the Indian movies wali, where they end up having sex) it’s platonic, you don’t have the physical desire in this type of love (though DSM labeled philia as disturbing sex issues but its originally not).
3۔ STORGE:
STORGE is the love which came from kinship, from parents(Bahubali lot has to the Shiva without knowing him).
4۔ LUDUS:
It is the kind of love kids have today to each other when they tease each other or flirt with each other (when they haven’t grown the sexual parts) like our infatuations, crushes.
5۔ MANIA:
MANIA, obsession, is one we watch in movies (like what the recent Indian drama was with Jennifer Winget in it). You stalk and made other one life hell (no Facebook stalking doesn’t count).
6۔ PRAGMA:
It is the love which is developed over time (yes like notebooks, like Hermoine and Ron) even in friends you can notice this. In this love, efforts from both sides are made to sustain a relationship.
7۔ PHILAUTIA:
It is self-love (oh no! You dirty minds, no touching to yourself no pleasuring).
8۔ KITS:
KITS, the healthiest love which we often read in quotations that to love others you must first love yourself. Because even Greeks know in 9 century B.C, that the person who doesn’t love himself can’t love anyone else.
9۔ AGAPE:
It is spiritual love, (Ishq e Haqiqi) the one Allama Iqbal wanted all Muslims to have. The love between the mureed and his murshid.
In the end, all I could say is that love is present everywhere. It’s a part of us. All we have to do is to understand what we are really feeling and for this, we have to be emotionally intelligent.
