Hearts

Last Wednesday I told you all about a word that I cut out of my vocabulary. Today, I have another for you. This is one that I'm still working on, and really one that I'm trying to limit more than completely cut out. I think you'll see my point pretty quickly.

Love

The thing with love in English is that there aren't any specific degrees to it. In Greek there are a few different words that mean love, different kinds of love, so that there's less confusion. English lacks that.

Where they have four words, we have one: love.

Other languages have words that define degrees of love, like brotherly love, erotic love, friendly love, and unfathomable love, but English somehow ended up with only one. It makes for some confusion, because we're unable to truly express our feelings about certain things—all because we use the word love very frequently and indiscriminately. 

We use love in reference to a lot of different things, some of which I don't even think we really and truly love. It's just that we like them a lot, and we don't have another word to say that. Saying "I like this a lot" is many more words than the simpler, love... but it also means that love has diminished in power, in many of our vocabularies.


We say we love our moms.

We say we love our dogs. (and cats, for you crazy people out there)

We say we love pizza.

We say we love sunny days.

We say we love our friends.


But because English only has one word for the feeling, there's no way for us to express what we mean by love. I believe most of us intend to say that we love our parents more than we love pizza, but it can't come out that way. We don't have another word for it.

That being in case, in my personal vocabulary I've chosen to limit the use of love. I use it now only when I really mean it, when the thing is truly something that I love — which means I pretty much only use it in reference to people.

I don't love my dog as much as I love my mother.

I don't love pizza as much as I love my best friend.

So really, I don't love those things at all. My puppy is my buddy, and I like him a lot. Pizza is just plain delicious. They're things though, they're not people, and so I cannot love them. And before you get all uppity about the dog one, remember that even legally, your dog is your possession, not a part of your family. You can have great and deep feelings for your dog, feelings akin to a form of love, but you can't (or rather, shouldn't) love your dog the same as you love the people in your life.

Love, for me, is reserved for people, actual human beings. And that way, you know I mean it when I say that I love you. The power comes back to the word.

[love]

{Rani D.}