All you need is love. Love is like oxygen. Love is a slug. Love is the drug.
So, let’s celebrate the star of emotions all year, instead of just for one day. I want #365DaysOfLove to counteract the divisive, dismissive and depraved realities we all face on some level. You heard of "kill ‘em with kindness," and now, "lull ‘em with love." Calling out versus calling in. Stepping in front of yourself, to redirect anything but love. Spread your love. Love is the answer.
Love restores the body/mind/soul complex. It heals and sustains life. Research shows that love lowers blood pressure and extends longevity. People live for it and they die without it.
Love hurts. Love cuts. I hope to love with a whole heart, and without expectation, beyond mutual respect and trust, instead of screaming expletives and highjacking relationships. My love needs work.
Be warned: love is dynamic.
"Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are Love and love. There is the dove and there is the serpent. Choose ye well!" says Aleister Crowley in The Book Of The Law.
I’m no Crowleyan or Thelemite, but the above quote sums up my overall concept of love. At the heart of the many forms of love, it’s essentially split in two: transcendent love and transgressive love. The dove is unconditional love and the serpent conditions love under its inane and base restrictions. Both have their place.
Philosophically speaking, there are about eight main variations of love. The following list of loves comes from the ancient Greeks and modern psychology. Eros through Storage appeared in the article, "These Are The 7 Types Of Love," in Psychology Today (2016). Other internet lists add "mania"—my guess is Psychology Today didn’t want to include the flipside of love beyond Ludas. I’m a realist, so I’ve included it and added an extra, "tough" love, which (hopefully) impels one toward resiliency and exaltation.
Love In A Plain Numbered List
My spin: These variations of love fall under the two categories of dove-serpent: unconditional-conditional.
Eros, Ludas, Mania and maybe even some of Tough loves lean toward conditional. The absence of physical attraction won’t result in Eros or Ludas, unless intoxication takes control. Mania wouldn’t care if certain conditions weren’t being met—otherwise, we’d have no cyberstalking. Tough love first had to fumble through codependency.
Philia, Pragma, Philatuia, Agápe and Storage manifest unconditionally. Loyal, lasting bonds, self-preservation and deep love for all life break free from conditions—either due to time and history or an innate rejection of expectation and return. Here, love has no transactionality. Love is a free-for-all.
I’m not making any sweeping judgments about the nuances of unconditional versus conditional loves. I’m merely pointing out the evident paradigm. I want to do away with higher/lower concepts and prefer to look at these love nuances as cycles that intertwine our lives. The unification of opposites alchemizes the internal and external. Therefore, know your love variants and how to transform them for a single end goal: unity for the sake of #365DaysOfLove.
I challenge you to meditate on love every day. Love for the freedom to access this adult magazine. Love for dead rockstars. Love for your third baby mama, your synth years and your parole. Love daily. Love above will.
Love appeared in this article 56 times, if you count this sentence.
