I I’ve spent of a lot of my life, a lot of my time, thinking, and writing, about love.
Love is a wholly inadequate word, in english, to express all the dozens of things we mean when we say love.
I love a good sandwich, my favorite bourbon. I love my favorite band, my favorite song.
I love to cook. I love my favorite teevee shows. I love riding mortorcycles.
These are all true, without being metaphoric. Because these are loves.
I love my kids, my dogs, have loved a dozen rats, mice, guinea pigs. I loved a parrot my daughter had. And these are loves, true and heartfelt.
I loved my parents, I love certain friends. I’ve cried over the heartbreak of loss, because love can mean heartbreak.
One word, Love, isn’t enough for all of that. It’s the same word; each one of those things is a love, but each one is wholly different. The love for bands or books or art, isn’t the same as the love of a friend. The love of a pet, and the love of a child – while in many ways almost the same – isn’t the same.
We need at least three words to cover the above. Love-of-object, love-of-activity, love-of-friends/family/pets. Really that could be 5 words, and I could keep subdividing, like kids today will with gender/sexuality identity, or musical genres.
But however many we end up with, it’s not one. Love won’t do it.
And then there’s another kind of love, which is not at all like the above. And we could have the same conversation, because it’s not just one thing, when we discuss it.