The Six Loves

There is a lot of love in my life. I am a lucky girl and I have been blessed by God Himself. But have you ever looked up what love means? I did today while trying to come up with a unifying theme for my blog. I went to an online encyclopedia and I came across The Six Loves.

Eros
Philia
Agape
Storge
Thelema
Pragma

These are all beautiful words, but they are so much more than just words. They each describe a part of me and what and whom I love.

Eros ~ "passionate love, with sensual desire and longing; is initially felt for a person, with contemplation it becomes an appreciation of the beauty within that person, or even becomes appreciation of beauty itself; helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty, and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth"
- - -For me, this passionate love is the love of life itself. I have been blessed with a great life and while it is not all beauty and love, I would not want it any other way. God created the world and people in his likeness and how can that be taken for granted? God made something good and that is something that must be admired and adored.- - -

Philia ~ "a dispassionate virtuous love; includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality and familiarity; used for love between family, between friends, a desire or enjoyment of an activity"
- - -This can only be used to describe how I feel for my close friends. I don't have many because I don't care to surround myself with a lot of people who don't share a mutual understanding of what a good friend is. My good friends are kind, caring, good listeners, will be there for me whenever I need it, would do anything to make me happier, and share in some of my favorite memories. This is my exact definition of "virture, equality, and familiarity." So thank you to my close friends for everything. You are my worldly angels and I love you for that.- - -

Agape ~ "appears in the New Testament describing, amongst other things, the relationship between Jesus and the beloved disciple (1 John 4:8, "God is love.")"
- - -I don't have as intimate relationship with the Lord as I'd like. However, I keep Him close and love and praise him with all my heart. He has given me this life and power to do whatever I want and I cannot thank Him more for that. The closer I am to Him, the happier I find myself.- -

Storge ~ "means "affection" in modern Greek; it is natural affection; rarely used in ancient works, and then almost exclusively as a descriptor of relationships within the family."
- - -I love my family more than anything on this earth. They are my rock and comfort and have helped me to become who I am today. I can truly say with 100% honesty that I would not be me without them. I would be lost and I don't even want to fathom what I would be doing right now without their love and support.- - -

Thelema ~ "means "desire" in modern Greek; it is the desire to do something, to be occupied, to be in prominence"
- - -This type of love refers to my schooling and extracirricular, soccer. I absolutely love the major I am delving into right now, public relations. I never really knew what it truly was until just before my freshman year of college. All I knew was that I love to write and read and be social and be creative and design things. I never imagined a major that could put all of these things into one. I absolutely love my classes and can't wait to hopefully get an internship somewhere soon! As for soccer, I play at the division one collegiate level and it is one of the hardest things I have to do in life. First, it takes up a lot of my time because I have to train everyday and focus a lot of energy on running to get fit and to get better technically with the ball. However, I wouldn't trade this experience for anything. I've made lifelong friendships, learned about hard work, discipline, teamwork, and time management that I don't know where I would have learned otherwise. All the blood, sweat, and tears that go into these two aspects of my life are some of the most important and critical times for growth.- - -

Pragma ~ "pragmatic love; rational, realistic expectations about love; want to find value and will work toward a common goal"
- - -While this is not the best word there is to describe my boyfriend and I, it is still true. I believe all the words above describe the kind of love I have for my boyfriend. However, I am young and have a lot of life ahead of me. I HAVE to be realistic about love. I cannot know at this age who I am meant to be with. I want to accomplish many things before I get married. But besides this, I am head over heels for him and have never felt this way about a man before. He means soooo much to me and I don't know what I'd do without him. Our relationship has been tested in many ways and we have managed to get through them. But, I know that there will be many more trials and I cannot predict what will happen.- - -

This is just the beginning of my brand new blog. I will be touching on 'the six loves' everyday and I hope you enjoy and come back for more. :)
*imastar*