What is LOVE?

The concept of love is of utmost importance.  It is the most important human feeling and motivating power.  It defines a worthwhile life.  Love is the basis of the first and second great commandments.  We all want to love and be loved.  Yet, despite knowing its importance, we struggle to know what it is.

Seemingly from the beginning of time, people have theorized about love.  The Greeks had four different words for love: storge (affection), philia (friendship), eros (romance), and agape (unconditional love).  Some define different types of love based on relationships: parent-child, friend-friend, man-God, lover-lover, etc.  In a psychology textbook I recently consulted, it proclaimed that theorists almost universally agree that love is divided into "types."

Jesus teaches us to love.  The first great commandment is to love God and the second is to love our fellowmen as we love ourselves.  The New Testament and the Book of Mormon teach us that we need charity, the pure love of Christ, to be saved.  Yet, we often separate this idea of Christian love (love of God and godly love for others) from our ideas about loving our friends, family, and significant others.  But the question I asked my self and that I ask you is, are they really different?

Is the love that I feel for a boy different than the love I feel for my mom?  Is the love I feel for my best friend different than the love the Savior admonishes us to have for all men?  Is the love I will one day feel for my children different than the love I feel for Christ?  Is love different when it is had in different relationships?  I argue that it is not.  Other things may be stirred into the mix (romantic love combines attraction and commitment, for example), but the love itself is the same.

So what is love?  How is it characterized?  Recognized?  Grown?

I submit that instead of types of love, there are levels.

On a basic level, love is an emotion of attachment and affection.  I feel this kind of love for my "circumstantial friends."  I like being around them; they make me happy.  I also feel this for extended family members that I don't see very often (being family, there is an added measure of commitment that isn't there with circumstantial friends, but it's the same level of love).

When love is complete, or perfect, it is the type of love we associate with the word charity.  You love the person for who they are, not what they do, and thus your love is an unchangeable fact.  You see the best in the person.  You see their potential and believe in their capacity to change and improve, thus enabling them to do so.  You give them the benefit of the doubt and forgive them easily.  You seek their comfort and well-being above your own, putting their wants and needs above yours.  In doing so you feel no ill will or resentment, only sincerity.

Marvin J. Ashton said, “Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don’t judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone’s differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn’t handle something the way we might have hoped. Charity is refusing to take advantage of another’s weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other.”

In between the basic and complete loves are countless levels of increasing emotion, building to reach the point of completeness.  There is an increase of mercy, compassion, service, gratitude, kindness, and understanding.

My good friend told me about a theory she read about that makes sense to me.  In this theory, the levels of love are called: identification, consummation, and consubstantiation.  Basically, the more you understand/know the person, the more you identify with them, and the more you love them (eventually ending at becoming "one").  The level at which you understand someone, have empathy for them, and put yourself in their shoes is the level at which you love them.  I've noticed that in my own life.  In high school I realized that when I didn't like people or they rubbed me the wrong way, it was because I didn't know them well enough.  Without fail, as I came to know those people better, I understood why they did things the way the did, and grew to love them.  The better you understand someone, the more you naturally love them.

For me, this shed an incredible light on Christ's love.  I believe that in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ experienced each of our lives.  He felt our guilt, pain, sickness, sorrows, anxieties, and temptations.  He did this, as the Book of Mormon prophet Alma teaches, "that his bowels may be filled with mercy according to the flesh, that he might know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities" (Alma 7:12).  Christ has perfect empathy for us and understands us perfectly, thus he can love us perfectly.  The atonement of Jesus Christ gave him a complete level of identification with us.  Because he understands me so perfectly he loves me completely.  I will be able to love Christ in return as I increase my level of identification with him.  The more I keep his commandments, feed his sheep, and build his kingdom, the more I will understand and love him.

Thus, my conclusions are as follows: there is one love instead of differing types of love, love is felt in varying degrees, and the more we understand/identify with someone the more we love them.  I also think that love is grown through sacrifice and service.  The more we give of ourselves, the more attached we feel and the more compassion we have.