WORDS OF LOVE: THE HAPS AND TRAPS

MY BIKER NEIGHBOUR, BALA

Hmmm …Now that the love-inspired Saint Valentine’s Day, which began as a heterosexual solicitation (a contrivance of social psychology) to immediately procreate and ultimately continue the species (the confection of evolutionary psychology), is finis, I’ve had a few days to reflect and research just enough to write about the kinds of love with a semblance of authority.  

Even though those early Christian Saint Valentine’s Day feasts were nary a tribute to the LGBT community, our current February 14^th has certainly become a commercial celebratory and romantic date for all.  But rather than gormandizing on feasts as they did in the days of yore, chocolates and strawberries and cards containing little red hearts are now the affectionate nibbling fixes for everyone lesbian or gay or bisexual or transgender or asexual or pansexual or even, heterosexual,

Yes.  All this tradition in the name of love. 

And just as there are divers types of lovers, there are, too, divers types of love.  According to Canadian activist and academic writer, John Alan Lee, there are six:

There is Eros, the Greek for word for romantic, passionate.  An Eros love means a love with as much sex as possible.  Definitely the behaviour of adolescents and young adults, even those older adults having affairs are enjoying the fruits of Eros.  Playing guitar on stage at a bar or on the sidewalk on a busk lends opportunities for Eros on EVERY OCCASION.  (This I know based upon empirical evidence.  Even though a didgeridoo is more phallic than a guitar, didge busking is not the girl-getter compared to busking with a guitar.)

There is Ludus, the Latin word for game.  Ludus lovers have as much fun as possible with one another.  Outdoors or indoors, those in Ludus are playful and adventurous.  Ludus lovers are the ones who hike together outside and tantric together inside.

Of course in evolutionary psychology we have Storage, the Greek word for familial love.  These are the loves among siblings, the love shared between parents and spouses, parents and their children, and the obligatory blood kin love for cousins and other family loyalties.  The proverb, “Blood is thicker than water” has been around since medieval times.  I understand the pain of my parents; whereas, I feel the pain of my children – this is Storage.  And at those family reunions, whether they are weddings or funerals, everyone tolerates the gossipy Aunt Gladys and the tippling Uncle Ted.  Everyone is civil to the hidebound, cousin Harold, the maudlin, cousin Mary – this, too, is Storage.  (Such reunions prompt a rabbit-hole of alliterations, which are always fun to write.)

Mania, the Greek word for mental disorder seems the worst kind of love.  This is love obsessive and love possessive.  This is the love that causes madness and jealousy.  This is the scary love you see on thriller and horror television and movie screens.  This is the scary love that necessitates the need for women’s shelters.

Agape, the Greek word for altruism, represents the purest form of love, selflessness.  Not-so-strangely, Agape is oftentimes referenced with religions and commitments to deities, both polytheistic and monotheistic.  There is even an Agape Television Network, purportedly an inspirational and Christian delivery of information.

And the last I’ll mention is the love of Pragma.  Pragma, the Greek word for businesslike, manifests love in a pragmatic, practical and convenient sense.  The Pragma type of love is the enduring type of love; the kind you see with old married couples still holding hands.  Pragma is the kind of love that has grown over time because of compromise.  Similar to the familial love of Storage, friends you’ve had since childhood, too, are Pragma.  (Every time one goes to a graduate or town reunion, and no matter the distance in time between visits, your childhood friends from your developmental years are still the same and still your friends.)

If it proves so, then loving goes by haps, some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps (Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing Act 3, Scene 1).   

All of these types of love mentioned are just haps and traps.  All these loves are the consequence of happenchance, where you’re from and where you’ve gone and whom you’ve met along the way, and once stricken, when you are love-struck, you are trapped.

One upon a time in a graduate Psychology class, a colleague of mine presented a paper on The Concept of Love, in which he argued that anyone, under the right conditions, can fall in love with anyone.

And when you think of it, of the 7.6 billion people on the planet, how is it that it just so happens that we often find our true-love, our soul-mate, our heart’s-desire, at our school or at our workplace or at any other gathering of chance.  What are the odds! 

Saying this, whether we be oafs or profs or somewhere in between, fortunately the evolutionary odds are very high that we will hap and trap and be able to love and beloved by that special someone!