Love and Agappi

Don’t think that it is an outdated post as the Valentine’s Day is over a month before. In the today’s world we have got an impression that Love is Lust. The word love is being only used to indicate the relationship between a boy and a girl and we are forgetting all other forms of love. In this post, I try to write about what is the meaning of the word ‘Love’ and how it came into existence.

The word ‘Love’ is from the Greek language. There are different types of love namely Eros, Philia, Storge and Agappi.

Eros – the erotic love comparable to that of word Lust, used to indicate the love between husband and wife. It can be even physical attraction.

Philia – is described as love of wisdom. It is more of commercial kind maintained based on or looking into the benefits of relation.

Storge – is a kind of natural affection, best example is father’s or mother’s affection towards the offspring.

Agappi – is the important one referring to the pure love. It is not of physical attraction as mentioned in the Eros. It is the love towards the fellow men.

Of all these types or senses of Love as called in Greek language the one which is required is the last one Agappi. Love towards our fellow men.

Love has meaning in the broad sense and reduced to indicate the lust in the recent times. Our ancient scriptures and our ancient culture had the concept similar to the Agappi. In the concrete world raised because of technology renaissance we are not having time to see the faces of neighbors and most of the times we won’t be knowing who stays in our next house!

I feel if we adopt the concept of Agappi instead of waiting anyone else to do it first, we can hope to have or see the new world where we are losing all kind of relationships and values of humanity.