Artwork by Michael DiMilo
Originally Published 2/14/2022
By Geoff Carter
In her novel Surfacing, Margaret Atwood wrote “The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them, there ought to be as many for love.” She‘s probably right, although what passes for love today might not be as important to us as snow was for the ancient Eskimos. After all, the different types of snow provided them with roads, their homes, their roadmaps, and their mythologies. Love for us is maybe not so vital.
Today is Valentine’s Day, a holiday when we buy cardboard hearts, gooey candy, showy jewelry, pretty cards, and candlelit romantic dinners as symbols of our love and devotion. This of course is all directed at our special someones, our significant others. All of which is fine and good—and fun—but the truth is that it barely scratches the surface of how we could approach Atwood’s other types of love.
What types of love are we talking about? Familial love? Brotherly love? Love of God and country? Passion? According to Emily Gulla in her Cosmopolitan article 8 Different Types of Love Explained, the ancient Greeks—along the same lines as Ms. Atwood—defined eight types of love, including Eros, or passionate love; Pragma, or enduring love; Storge, or familial love; Mania, or obsessive love; Ludus, or playful love; Philia, or deep friendship; Agape, or universal love; and, finally, Philautia, the love of self.
These seem to cover most aspects of the love spectrum: family, friends, significant others, crushes, and love of natural the world. We’ve experienced most of these in one way or another, but it seems as if philautia—self-love—has been front and center lately. We’ve seen flamboyant expressions of self-love everywhere: billionaires demonstrating (on the biggest stage they can find) their overweening self-importance by building their own private space fleets; a public official so consumed with his own narcissistic impulses that he felt compelled to override the wills of over eight million voters, or citizens so concerned with their own self-ordained freedoms that they refuse to take precautions to prevent the spread of a deadly virus.
Of course, this sort of masturbatory self-regard is an extreme. True self-love, including feelings of self-worth, self-confidence, and self-importance—but not too much of it—is necessary for our mental health.
I always remember the quote “because darn it, we’re good enough, we’re smart enough, and, doggone it, people like us.” While Saturday Night Live’s Stuart Smalley, as played by Al Franken, was being tongue-in-cheek, these sentiments should not be laughed off. Everyone—everyone—is good enough and smart enough.
While we see examples of Agape, or universal love, all around us, it still seems to be the most elusive of the eight. It’s easy to say we love everyone—especially at Christmas—or to go to church and profess unconditional love for Jesus, but these noble sentiments don’t always pan out in real life. While most of us will ooh and ah over pictures of puppies on the internet or feel all warm and fuzzy at the end of the latest Hallmark movie, we might also turn away from the homeless guy on the corner, flip off the guy who cut us off in traffic, or write nasty comments to that troll on Facebook.
So, maybe we could amend our St. Valentine’s Day sentiments to expand our circles of regard. Give that homeless guy a buck. Restrain yourself from calling that guy on Facebook a %*^$*%&!! Wave somebody into the lane ahead of you. Whether it’s eight or fifty-two types of love—or even more, it won’t hurt to let them in. There are fifty-two ways to leave your love behind.
Happy Valentine’s Day.