This week’s reading attempts to understand the meaning of love. We learn the different definitions of love the moment we were welcomed in this world. By learning different definitions of love, it makes it difficult for us people to truly define it with a concrete, unchanging answer. One quote that stood out to be in the reading is “To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients-care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.” There are plenty of aspects to keep in mind when to truly love somebody. The explanation about “cathexis” is very convincing that now I get the song “Only know you love her when you let her go.” I could also tie this to Sigmund Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia. When we lose someone, we mourn them by reliving/remembering our moments with that person. Worse, we have attached ourselves to this person (different causes of attachment—like the reading said, could be abuse) so much that we imitate this person or reject the idea that this person is gone—this is a form of melancholia.
Like the reading stated, there is a “lack of an ongoing public discussion and public policy about the practice of live in our culture and in our lives means that we still look to books as a primary source of guidance and direction”—kind of ironic coming from a reading. If people are in-sync of the meaning of love, this book will not exist, but it is not the case. Hopefully as an educator, I could incorporate this teaching of love to my future students because it is important, even right now for me, to have a better understanding of the word love.
Personal Remarks:
“As a society we are embarrassed by love” The first sentence hits home for me. Saying “I love you” is some of the weirdest feelings I have ever felt. I personally do not go about and telling my close friends and acquaintances that I love them. I mostly show my love by action—doing good for others, helping them as much as I can, etc. Whenever I get a call from my parents, we sure say I love you—but it is more of a cue to end the call than a genuine message. Overall, I wholeheartedly agree that, as a part of society, I am embarrassed by love.
When I was studying in high school, specifically Catholic Studies, we were taught the four types of love:
- Eros: basically, means erotic love; sexual love; etc.
- Philia: love of friends
- Storge: love of family; and most importantly
- Agape: love of mankind
Whenever we hear the word love, we think of it as Eros—affectionate love—while love could be much more than being sexually attractive to people. Agape is the most important type of love because it has no boundaries—we are allowing ourselves to love every mankind. In my Catholic Studies class, we define “agape-type” of love as “the action of seeking and fostering the good of another and self in their real concrete situation.” For my understanding, this is a form of sacrificial love—we are willing to put ourselves out there and foster good by doing good things to you peers and allowing good to be done to you. I believe is the best kind of love you could give to a person or any other living thing. We can start to explore more about love by recognizing our actions to people—do we help people because we love them? Care about them? Or it is just simply to create a good image? Do you respond to you friend’s spam messages because you have the patience? If so, is this a love patience that no matter how annoying your friend is, you still respond to them? Or patience so you could remain friends with them?
Here is Sigmund Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia
Freud_MourningAndMelancholia.pdf (upenn.edu)
Here are the four types of love: