• What is love?
• love as a value
• Types of love
• symbols of love
• Day of love and Friendship
• Phrases about love

We explain what love is, what types exist and how it is symbolized. Also, why is the day of love celebrated on February 14?

Love can be directed both to a partner and to family members or pets.

What is love?

love is a feeling of affected, inclination or intense attraction that a person experiences for another, for a loved one or for certain significant places.

This attraction can manifest itself in many different ways: as romantic attraction and erotica, as a filial or family affection, or simply assiduousness and affectionate evocation. Thus, we feel love for our parents, but also for our partner, for our pets or for a city, and each of these loves is different from the other.

Since the beginning of civilization, love has been one of the great topics that has been written and thought about. Love is found in the mythological stories of the Antiquity among the primal forces of the universe, often as the determining factor for creation: a god falls in love with another and from his love they create everything that exists.

But in those same stories love can be found represented as a destructive force, which pushes towards jealousy, towards gonna and to destruction. This is the case, for example, in the Greek mythology with the kidnapping of Helen of Troy, since her jealous husband starts a ten-year war to try to get her back.

In modern times, however, numerous scientists have studied the biochemical changes that the feeling of love induces in the human brain, and have been able to identify the region of the brain that responds to the intense feeling of love. happiness that gives the union with the loved object.Even so, there are not many scientific certainties regarding the nature of love.

The term “love” can be used to name very different things. So much so, that we do not always know how to distinguish it from other feelings.

love as a value

In general, love occupies a positive place in our way of understanding relationships and ourselves. In fact, we associate it with expressions of affection, tenderness and compassion, with the gesture of giving attention and even making sacrifices. That is, for example, what the gift that couples give each other when they celebrate their anniversary symbolizes or what we mean when we ask someone to do something “with love”.

Love confers value on the loved object, that is, it makes it something very important, something vital. Hence, love is something that every individual wants to have, because to love and being loved are core values ​​in virtually every cultures.

On the other hand, in the main religions monotheists, the love of human being it must be in the first place for God. For example, him Christianity catholic understands the sin as the actions or thoughts that offend God, that is, that stain the love that we must profess, because according to religious thought, there is nothing more important in the world than God.

Types of love

Love manifests itself in very different ways. For example:

• The self-love. Called, in psychological parlance, self esteem, self-esteem must be understood as a healthy assessment that each person makes of himself. In other words, it is the love we owe ourselves, whether in a narcissistic way or not. A person without self-esteem reduces their value and does not know how to recognize the importance they have in the future of their own lives, while a person with excess self-esteem will be a person arrogant, vain or proud.
• Filial or family love.It is the kind of love experienced by those united by blood ties, that is, the love of parents for their children and of children for their parents, love between close relatives or even between people who do not share blood ties, but who They have grown up together and feel part of the same family. In general, it translates into a protective feeling, of gratitude or of belonging to a common origin.
• Brotherly love. Its name comes from the Latin brother, "brother", and therefore it is a love that resembles companionship and friendship, to the extent that it is devoid of erotic and romantic aspirations. Fraternal love is the love of brothers, that is, the love that unites friends and pushes them to respect mutual, to undertake joint projects and to the loyalty.
• romantic love It is about the love that people feel for their partners, or for those who could be. In general it is a passionate love, who longs for company and loyalty, but also erotic and sexual intimacy. This type of love receives its name due to its most recent reinvention, which occurred in the eighteenth century with the artists and thinkers of the Romanticism. However, it has always existed, although not expressed in the same way.
• The platonic love. Today platonic love is understood as a love devoid of body and reality, an idealized love that often cannot be consummated. It is a reinterpretation of the ideas about love that the Greek philosopher Plato (from the 4th century BC) expressed in his famous The banquet, and that originally consisted of a love of ideas, to TRUE, to beauty same.

symbols of love

Love has been a reason for representation since ancient times and numerous symbols have been assigned to it, deities and imaginary senses. In Western culture, an important part of them comes from the Greco-Roman imaginary and the Christian religion, for example:

• Cupid. A typical image associated with love is that of the winged child holding a bow and arrow, also known as an angel, putti or erote. It is an inheritance of Greek mythology, since it is one of the Roman representations of Eros, god of love, responsible for the "crush" of falling in love. However, his boyish appearance emerged during the Renaissance, through the fusion of the god Eros and the Christian cherubim, and is known as putty.
• The heart. The drawing of the heart is perhaps the most universal symbol of love today, although it is an inheritance from Christianity. Its origin dates back to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which according to the Catholic Church appeared in a dream to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 17th century, wrapped in a crown of thorns. However, the idea that the heart (the human organ) is the seat of the emotions and passions is much earlier: it can be found in ancient Greek and Roman texts.
• The roses. The typical Valentine's Day gift, the flower and especially the red rose, is a symbol of love that many interpret differently depending on the color of the petals: a red rose denotes passionate love, while a white rose it alludes to a pure and innocent love, and a pink rose refers to a fraternal love, of friendship.
• The ring. More related to marriage than to love itself, rings are symbols of commitment, acting as an emblem of the relationship. Today they are a less relevant symbol when it comes to expressing love, but they are still used as a promise of a future marriage (the engagement ring).

Day of love and Friendship

On February 14 of each year the day of love and friendship is celebrated, which coincides in the Catholic calendar with Valentine's Day.Originally this Christian anniversary paid tribute to the good deeds and loving preaching of Saint Valentine of Rome, although three Catholic martyrs from different times are known by that name.

Another explanation of its origin is that it was the celebration invented by the Catholic Church in Roman times to try to replace the traditional festivals. lupercal, a rite Roman celebrated every February 15 to ask women for fertility.

Today, Valentine's Day is dedicated to love and friendship, and is celebrated through the exchange of gifts, cards, roses or other symbols of love and affection. This celebration has a significant commercial impact in most Western countries.

Phrases about love

Here are some famous phrases and quotes about love:

• "It is true that in the world of men there is nothing necessary, only love." J.W. Goethe, German writer.
• "Love is not looking at each other, but looking together in the same direction." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French aviator.
• "Loving yourself is the beginning of an adventure that lasts a lifetime." Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright.
• "All we know about love is that love is all there is." Emily Dickinson, American poet.
• “Not being loved is a simple misfortune. The true fatality is to not know how to love." Albert Camus, French writer.
• "Love without admiration is simply friendship." George Sand, French writer.
• "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." Jimi Hendrix, American musician.
• "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved." Alfred Tennyson, English poet.