Like v. Love?

This brief movie centers on two points that are personal priorities. First is the importance of choosing words accurately. Truth is essential, and our language should be intentional to best convey the meanings of our messages. A varied vocabulary also brings richness into our communication. Synonyms allow us to deepen and expand our messages without having to constantly resort to degrees of "more" or "less." Imagine coming home from the "best" concert you have ever attended and only being able to describe it as "nice." Would it not be more satisfying to describe it as "intense", "memorable", "epic", or "amazing"? For a more visually centered example, surely "blue" is different from "turquoise" and "aqua" and "cobalt." 


Researching adjectives is not the point here, but rather cultivating the ability to describe your life experience. Indeed, I would argue that the extent of our language can shape how we frame our life experiences. This brings me to the second personal priority captured in this video; I am striving to sort through my "loves." Everyone agrees that love is complicated, but perhaps that is partially because we need more words to describe this aspect of the human experience. Unfortunately, English has only one word that must account for a vast array of emotions, relationships, actions, addictions, and proclivities. 


The Greeks had four words for love: eros, philos, storge, and agape. The "love is a verb" phrase comes from the word agape, which describes an unconditional, sacrificial, active state of being demonstrated by the early Christians. The word was created to describe the type of behavior that came about from practicing the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In English our new verbs come from brand names: Xerox, Google, Facebook, etc. What a difference it would make if I  had a way to describe the affection I feel towards my friend and the action I take to help her through a hard week!


Now, I am going to continue bestowing effusive "I love you's" on my cat and weirding people out by mentioning that I have crushes on Trader Joe's and on the Post Office. I confess this as I have no wish to be the "love" Nazi, especially preceding Valentine's Day. Still, I think it's important that we determine in our own minds what it means to love people. Perhaps we will discover that we respect, appreciate, value, admire, adore, desire, and enjoy the people, places, and things in our lives and that love is something different altogether.