Life Angles: LIFE Acronym #7 - Love Is For Everyone

LIFE Acronym #7:
"Love Is For Everyone"

This is a vast and far-reaching subject, and I wish that I had the time to write a whole book on it, because love truly is the most powerful force in the Universe. But alas, I only have today to finish this blog post.

I want to start by talking about non-romantic love. Each of us has a deep, inner desire to feel loved, accepted and important. This kind of longing is one of the most elemental needs of human beings, and is fulfilled by the unconditional love and acceptation that we feel from family and our closest, most loyal friends.

This basic human need of course can also be fulfilled by the romantic love felt by a spouse, as that kind of love is of another level, and is one of the most powerful types of love on the planet.

The most powerful type of love however is Charity, the kind that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ feel for all mankind. Charity is not reserved for deity alone, but is something that we mortals are commanded to develop as well. Charity demands that we love even our enemies, with a godly type of love for them as human beings, and a desire for the welfare of their souls. This is why it is more powerful than romantic love. Developing this type of love for all of humanity will make us more like God.

Romantic love is somewhat conditional upon our lover staying our lover. Think about it. If your lover decides to become your enemy, you will most likely cease to love that person in a romantic way, yet will perhaps still love them with Charity.

Charity will only win out though if your own capacity for unconditional love has been properly developed.

But before we delve more into that, let me muse for a bit on this basic, foundational need for love that every single one of us has.

Think of the lonely people out there. Think of the people who for one reason or another, don't feel loved. This feeling within them may likely be a fallacious figment of their imagination, because they don't recognize the love that people do have for them. But whether it's true or not isn't the point. The point is whether or not they BELIEVE that it is true.

Wallowing in the desolate abyss of feeling unloved is devastatingly damaging to a person's mental and emotional stability.

And when someone is mentally and emotionally unstable, the workings of their powerful mind can deceptively lead them to do very deleterious things. Sometimes, when somebody reaches the rock bottom of their loneliness and desertion, they can attempt suicide, or attack others just to be noticed.

This should be a glaring clue to you of the importance of feeling loved, and making sure that others know that they are loved. It comes right after the basic need of having food and water. It comes even before the instinctual urge to seek shelter from the elements.

Are you in a role in your life that would classify you as one of the primary love-givers for someone? Determine that for yourself, and if you feel that you are indeed in that position, make sure to do your part not only to cultivate a love for that person, but to make sure that they feel it and know that they are loved.

I'm using the word "love" here in a general way, even though there are several different types of love. I have for the most part left it up to you to determine which type of love it is that you are supposed to be giving, and this is due in part to one of the many inherent flaws in the English Language.

Somehow, in the evolution of English as a language, the word "love" came to have many different meanings.

I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but when a word has several different meanings, it is actually a sign of the decay and decline of that language, or of the original inadequacy of that language.

The more meanings a word has, the less effective the word is, because when it is used it is ambiguous. When an ambiguous word is used, we are then left to decipher the intended meaning simply based upon the context.

The problem with this scenario is that there is not always adequate context. In fact, more often than not, there is inadequate context to determine the exact meaning that was intended to be conveyed when the word was used.

For instance, imagine that you are walking along the street and you hear a man say the words "I love Cinnamon" to someone he's talking to on the phone. You continue walking and don't hear anything else. Then, you start to wonder to yourself who or what exactly he was referring to. There's no way to know.

Was he talking about cinnamon the spice? Perhaps.

But, Cinnamon could also be a female name. I've actually personally known two people with that name.

Even assuming that it was a female person that he was referring to, do you have any way of knowing the relationship between that person and the man who referred to her as you walked by? Is Cinnamon a good friend of his, or perhaps his daughter, or maybe his wife?

Did you know that the original Greek Language, there were not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different words to signify love?! That is because there is more than one type of love! Why we grouped them all together in this complex, confusing language called English will forever be a mystery to me.

Ancient Greek's four words for love are: storgē, philía, éros, and agápe. I put them in this order myself. I'm not sure if they have any particular appropriate hierarchical sequence.


I'll start with storgē. This one for the most part signifies affection, specifically the type of affectionate love that is felt by parents for their children, although it was sometimes used to signify the kind of unconditional, charitable love that is encompassed by the biblical use of our word "charity". Unfortunately we have no verb for the word "charity" in English. As a side note, our word "charity" has actually declined from its original use, to now be confused with altruistic giving. Shame on whoever is responsible for this and the many other degradations of the English Language, the most widely-used and commonly taught language in the world today.

Next I'll talk about philía, which mostly denotes the kind of dispassionate, brotherly love that you feel for a close friend or sibling. This type of love symbolizes virtuous love, loyalty, familiarity, and equality, and is a concept developed originally by Aristotle.

Then there's éros, which actually is somewhat ambiguous itself, but still is far more specific in its scope than the English word "love". Éros is primarily the type of passionate love felt between lovers, with sensual desire and longing. The modern Greek word "erotas" means "intimate love". However, eros does not have to be sexual in nature. It can be interpreted as signifying that you love a person more than the philía type of love. Plato refined the meaning of éros to refer to an even deeper meaning beyond just the person themselves, but to the innate, transcendent, eternal beauty within that person. Plato holds that true love requires no physical attraction, hence the word "platonic". He says that eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty, and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth. I would interpret this as a metaphysical, spiritual recognition that takes place between two people. It's so much more than physical as we know it. It's an unquantifiable communication from spirit to spirit, or soul to soul. It's not just your mind or your eyes, but your SPIRIT recognizing the pure and genuine nature of someone else's spirit. It's sometimes referred to as "the glow". When this type of feeling goes both ways, many people today describe that as a recognition between "soulmates". And just so you know, today's most widely-held definition of the word "soulmate" does not have to refer only to the recognition between a man and a woman that leads to a relationship. It can also apply when you find an exceptionally good friend, kindof an "insta-friend" or kindred spirit.

Last we have agápe, which is still a little ambiguous but is nonetheless far more specific than the general word "love" in the English language. This one connotes more of the unconditional type of love felt between husband and wife. In Greek, if you were going to say "I love you" to your spouse like we do in English to remind our mate of our devotion, you'd generally say "s'agapo". It is the step up from éros, and is a deeper sense of love, like "true love" in English. The problem is, once again, in English there is no verb for "true love". Agape is the word used in the "love chapter" of the Bible, 1st Corinthians 13. It is explained as "sacrificial love", which again there is no verb for in English. This brings us to the bit of ambiguity that the word agápe contains, and that is that it was also sometimes used to refer to the supreme enjoyment of a meal, or the accepting type of paternal or maternal love toward a child. In these uses, it can be more specifically described as a sense of contentment, or holding something or someone in very high regard.

I figured that this treatise on the ancient origins and meanings of the word "love" was appropriate for this post, and especially considering that today is the Sabbath.

Now I want to delve a little bit more into romantic love. We are built to love. We are meant to pair up. God made male and female to be together. He said in Genesis 2:18, "...It is not good that man should be alone...".

There have been countless studies proving that happily married couples have less stress, and even live longer. But that is only the surface of the benefits of the divinely-sanctioned institution of marriage.

However, I'm not talking about marriage in this post; I'm talking about love. And at the moment, I'm talking about romantic love. It's for the love of a woman that some of history's greatest men have been inspired. It's for love that great men sacrifice so much, and accomplish so much. Almost every great man of accomplishment has had a great woman by his side to back him up, support him, and keep him on track.

The purposeful union between a man and a woman adds so much more dynamic power and potential to each of them. It's one of the perfect examples of synergy. Synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; a.k.a. 1+1=3. Synergy takes place when the two combined things interact with one another in a way that makes them each more valuable, and more capable for good.

When a man and a woman join together, they compliment each other, support each other, and add to each other's confidence and contentment. They bring out the best in each other. Loneliness becomes a foreign feeling to them. They always have their best friend right there, in everything they do and through everything that they experience.

And most importantly, in a relationship that is done properly and worked on; in a happy relationship, they fulfill each other's most basic and natural needs for feeling loved and accepted.

Feeling loved has the capacity to empower people beyond the power of any other influence in the universe. And GIVING of your love freely to another person also serves to enlighten your soul, and purify your heart.

Having somebody to love is almost as important as being loved yourself.

And to finish this all off, I would be remiss if I did not mention that God's love is always available for every single one of us to feel. And not only is it there, but it is PERFECT love, and we are commanded by Him to seek Him and feel His love for us. His love can fill any voids that we have, even if we do not currently have a single human being on Earth to help fill that void.

Also, we ourselves should LOVE GOD. He deserves our love and devotion more than any human we will encounter on this Earth. Not only do we OWE Him our love, it is IN OUR BEST INTEREST to love Him. The peace and blessings that we will receive by loving God will outweigh the riches of this entire world.

May we all do our best to always not only remember, but to KEEP IN MIND the importance of love, and of unconditional acceptance, passionate love, affection, sacrifice, brotherly love, true love, Godly love, and charity.