The Ancient Greeks had five words for love: agape, philia, storge, xenia, and eros - spiritual, mental, affectionate, hospitality and physical, specifically.
We have one word - love. It's a combination of Middle English "lufu", Old Frisian "luve" and Old High German "luba". (So maybe the lolcats are actually scholars of ancient languages. But I digress). We may use love in many different senses, ie - I love KitKat Bars, or I love that new song, but our culture tends focus on "love" in an entirely different way.
Take a look at any "woman's" magazine the next time you're in a checkout line. Or rather, don't, they're pretty tasteless and full of advice on how to be a two dimensional "perfect" woman. But a recurring theme is "How to tell if he's THE ONE", "6 Ways to Nab Your Dream Man" "83 Questions to See if You Are Meant To Be" etc etc etc etc. It's formulaic, it's a game, it's a competition. We might as well call it "How-To-Not-Be-A-CatLady-Opoly".
Love. It's the subject on everyone's minds, it's the elephant in the room, it's the caged bird in our souls. We all feel it, we all discuss it, but we only share it IF ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.
I'm not even talking about "soulmate" love here - I'm talking about being so afraid of rejection, that we can barely tell our friends and family that we care. Do we really think that some day on our death beds, that we will be regretting telling someone we loved them? No.
That's not to say you should give your heart away to everyone who walks through the door. You've seen Frozen? Getting engaged to someone after three hours - not exactly what we're talking about here.
I'm going to say something a little bit crazy.
Let it be broken. Your heart is incredibly strong. It's a muscle and it needs it's exercise. Weightlifters at the gym know how to use their muscles. They also know that they constantly need to push their muscles to the limits - ripping the muscle is how you build it up. Little tiny rips, make them jacked and stronger than ever.
Let your heart get jacked. Start with the baby 2lb weights - show your love daily in the little things. Pay attention to the details of the life of someone you care about. Smile at your coworkers. Work your way up to the 5lb kettleball - have a heart-to-heart with your friend late at night, and before you both fall asleep end with, "night, luv ya!" 8lbs and give your heart some crunches too - tell your mum how important she is, aside from giving you that amazing recipe for stirfry. Before you know it, love, like exercise, will simply become part of your day to day experience. You won't fear rejection, because you know your heart can handle it. I'm still working on getting there, practicing daily - like Mad Eye Moody shouts - "CONSTANT VIGILANCE" (only replace vigilance with love... and maybe don't scream it randomly. Or do. Whatever suits you best.)
But truly - a broken heart can hurt. It can ache. It can seem like it may never get better. But every injured muscle needs a little PT to recover. It's just like any sprained wrist or ankle - at first it will hurt to move it and get it better, but with practice and commitment overtime, it will heal, and hopefully become a distant memory.
You might say, Hey Patria, what's up with all the love nonsense lately? Why so wistful and introspective?
Well m'dear, I might say, hedging my bets, it simply has been on my mind. Maybe it's the teasing of spring in the air, but mostly I think it's because of another four letter L word --- Lent. Now there's an example of true love that I can never hope to match, but maybe in my short time on this planet, I can try to show even a little bit of that agape love to someone. And maybe all the other kinds of love will just fall in line behind that.
If we focus on loving others, and not on if others love us, we might just find that those two loves go hand in hand. No one is perfect, and we need not express love in a perfect way. It can be as clumsy as trying to take care of someone who is drunk after you've had a couple yourself. It could be a majestic confession at a balcony, but probably only in a Shakespeare play. It could be a hand-written confessional note, complete with elaborate cursive, or it could be mumbled on the phone sleepily before you hang up (and then swear with horror at your "love youuuu", and tear up that note cause they know now.) It could be a song....
The most important thing is that we get our exercise. Get out those two-pounders and start some reps right now!
There is nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
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