SUMMARY OF HORACE ARES POETICA

What is love?

This question has remained with a man for as long as time permits, even to the thoughts on interpretations and characteristics. Love seems to be the most used concept, term, or word often as a question, “Do you love me? A comment or a sentence “ I love you” and sometimes as a wish/desire “ I wish you could love me” and many more forms of expression attributed to love. This paper does not seek to exhaust, the concept as it seems inexhaustible, but it attempts to make a little form of inquiry and to give a little insight into the phenomenon.

This question has remained with a man for as long as time permits, even to the thoughts on interpretations and characteristics. Love seems to be the most used concept, term, or word often as a question, “Do you love me? A comment or a sentence “ I love you” defines and meanings what is love, and how it is used. From  Aristotle to our contemporary time, love has continued to be talked about, to Aristotle “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies”, to songwriters, love is described as a kind of feeling and emotion “Whenever you are near, I hear a symphony” and for Shakespeare “love is blind and lovers cannot see”.
             

                  Love is involuntary
               Love drives like thirst
              Love is the beginning of the end
              Love is the end of imperfection
             Love is medicine and cure to injustice and prejudice
            Love is the life and nature of God

         Yet, love is craving for a specific person.
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines love in certain numerous ways: love is a strong affection for someone arising out of kinship or personal ties e.g. Mutual love for a child; it is an attraction based on sexual desire:-affections and tenderness felt by lovers. Love is also an affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interest.
   Love is understood from different points of view, either as a person’s unselfish, loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another e.g. God’s love for mankind, or as a warm sexual embrace:-copulation-between lovers, such as lovemaking. The thought or ideology of love has been debated and discussed without reaching a decisive end. Love over the centuries has continued to be a major theme for literary writers, philosophers, religious maxims, performing and visual artists, political ideologies, and many realists, wherein, it yields ideas and thoughts such as “one love”, universal brotherhood” indeed no human doctrine or field of discourse is ever complete without a recourse to love.
      On the level of human relationship, it is the most talked about, with the view that “love is the cure for all of man’s inhumanity to man” and it would make room for us to accommodate one another, most of the conflicts in the life of the human being/societies are borne due to the lack or absence of love. Many wounds have been created by the wrong notion of love, and many wounds have also been healed by love.

  Types of love

   Due to the relevant and uncompromising role of love in human life, the ancient Greeks took very great pains in studying and categorizing the types of love, is there a thin line between love and lust? And is it the same as infatuations? According to modern psychology; love is the strong desire for emotional union with another person.
   Love is categorized into eight (8) different types by the ancient  Greeks and we shall be looking at them:
• Eros
• Phillia
• Storge/familiar love
• Ludus
• Pragma
• Philutia
• Agape.
 

EROS OR EROTIC LOVE

The first kind of love is Eros, which is named after the Greek God of Love and Fertility. This kind of represents the idea of sexual passion and desire. For Plato, Eros is a fundamental creative impulse having a sexual element. For the Greeks, this is the most dangerous kind of love and most consuming, as it involves a “loss of control” arising from the primal impulse to procreate. Eros is a passionate and intense form of love that arouses romantic and sexual feelings. This kind of love is the most common and most controversial. It is beautiful when it is indulged, but once its cravings are yielded, it soon dies off. Eros always stems from attracting the human body and the reaction of certain cells in the body i.e. between opposite sexes. The misapplication of this kind of love has continued to breed impulsive acts and broken hearts. It is the same as lust and infatuation, for it deprives us of judgments and morality, only to result in crisis at the end of the day. This weak level/form of love, therefore, requires the support of one of the other deeper forms of love to contain it. It is built on selfish needs and temporal. It is propelled by the physical body.

PHAILA OR AFFECTIONATE LOVE

 The word Phalia is the same thing as friendship; The Greeks placed this type of love above Eros because it is considered to be a love between equals. Plato felt that physical attraction was not a necessary part of love, therefore, the use of the word platonic to mean, “without physical attraction”. Phillia translates the affection, intimacy, and company that is shared by friends who have endured hard times and triumphed together. Phillia according to Aristotle translates to a “dispassionate virtuous love” that is free from the intensity of sexual attraction. This love or feeling develops through a natural process, of association, it commands a feeling of loyalty among friends, camaraderie among teammates, and a whole lot of sacrifice for one another, that is friendship without borders.
 Phillia is propelled by the mind and has the tendency to last a lifetime.
 

 STORGE/FAMILIAR LOVE

 Storge is closely related to phillia, which means love without physical attraction, Storge/familiar, primarily has to do with kinship and familiarity. It is a natural form of attraction that often flows between children and their parents, parents, and their children.
  However, it can be found among childhood friends that are later shared as adults. However, this kind of feeling in its powerful form has the tendency to become an obstacle on the guest and path to spiritual growth/freedom, especially where our family or friends do not align with or support our journey. It is a well-managed ideal, but the absence of it is what breeds hate and rips society apart. It is a casual feeling that is mutual and comes as a result of heredity. Once, the familiar love is lost the society is shaken from its roots.
 

LUDUS OR PLAYFUL LOVE

This kind of love is very similar to the erotic Eros, however, it is much more than that, it is the kind of affection shared by young lovers. It is the kind of feeling we all go through in the early stages of falling in love with someone, e.g the fluttering heart, flirting, teasing, and feelings of Euphoria, it is so encompassing that the good memories burst from playing and chatting with each can often send us the dream world over and over again. It is the playfulness ingredient In love, that is very essential and most times it leads to long-term relationships. It is the playfulness of love that acts as the secret ingredient to sustaining the childlike innocence of your love alive interesting and exciting, for once, this ingredient dies, the relationship suffers, and not long before it is ripped apart. Therefore, Ludus is propelled by the Astral ( emotions).

MANIA OR OBSESSIVE LOVE

 The dictionary defines Mania as an excitement manifested by mental and physical hyperactivity, disorganization of behavior, and elevation of mood: or an extreme enthusiasm for something that is usually shared by many people. Therefore, Mania's love is a type of love that leads a partner into a type of madness and possessiveness. This happens when there is an imbalance between Eros and Ludus. For those suffering from mania, love itself is a means of rescuing themselves; a reinforcement of their own values as the suffering of poor self-esteem. These persons desire to love and be loved to find a sense of self-value.
 As a result of this, they can become possessive and jealous lovers, feeling as if they desperately “need “ their partners. In the situation where the other partners fail to reciprocate with the same kind of mania love, a whole lot of issues prevail. This is why mania can often lead to issues such as code dependency. This type of love arises as a survival instinct, ie a means to an end.

PRAGMA OR ENDURING LOVE

 Pragma is that love that has aged, matured, and developed over time. It is beyond the physical it has surpassed the casual and it is a unique harmony that has formed over time. You can find pragma amongst married couples who have been together for a long time, or in a friendship that has endured for decades. Unfortunately, pragma is a type of love that is not easily found, so much time is spent trying to find love and little time is spent in learning to maintain it. Pragma is not like other types of love, for it comes as a result of effort on both sides it comes between people who have learned to make compromises and have demonstrated patience and tolerance to make the relationship work out.

PHILATUTIA OR SELF LOVE

 This kind of love came from the understanding that for us to care for others, we must first as a matter of fact learn to care for ourselves, but this must be dissociated from unhealthy vanity (greed) and obsession with one’s self due to fame (personal gains and fortunes which is obtainable in the Narcissism (egocentrism). Rather PHILATUTIA is self-love in its healthiest form. It involves self-compassion” which is the deep understanding that only once you can love yourself, that you will be able to love others. That is to say, you cannot give what you do not have, one who does not love himself is incapable of loving another. Therefore, true happiness comes first from an unconditional love for yourself. It is only when this is achieved, ie learning to understand one’s self and love it, that you will be ready and able to search for the spiritual freedom of self. This stems from the soul.

AGAPE

This is the most radical type of love, wherein the doctrines and philosophies of almost every religion are hewn around. It means a self–less unconditional love without attaching any conditions to it, neither sentimental nor obsessive. It is love without attaching any condition to it, neither is it connected to sexual cultures. On some level it is termed ‘spiritual love’ it is unconditional love bigger than us, without bounds, the Buddhist describes it as  “metta” or universal loving-kindness. The purest form of love is free from desires and expectations and is blind to our flaws and shortcomings. The God kind of love wherein he sacrificed his son for us “ Agape is the love that is felt for that which we intuitively know as the divine truth, the love that accepts forgives and believes for our greater good. This love is unmerited and unrequited. It can only come from God – Agape-God’s kind of love

 CHARACTERISTICS OF LOVE

From the discussion above about love, we can figure out the following as some of the characteristics of love:

• EFFORTLESS AND ETERNAL ATTRACTION: it is observed that when we are truly in love with someone, we get to discover moments of love and affection in the most normal of situations, we don’t need to put in anything, artificial to make it work everything, just seems to fall in place without much stress in the simplest things we do together, things just work out without forcing it, just as like poles attracts each other.

• MUTUAL RESPECT: Respect for each other is the most important thing (factor). It is achieved by giving each other enough space for personal growth and development, without crossing borders no matter what.

• ACCEPTANCE: the moment we are in love with a person, we naturally adapt ourselves to accepting the person for his or her positive and negative aspects. It broadens our perspectives allowing us to learn things that we wouldn’t have experienced. It alters the way we think and harmonizes all of our differences without Us being judgmental, but we are rather open to receiving and accepting love, the way it is.

• SELF-LESSNESS: we experience love, mostly when we give something. To receive love is not about our own selfish desires, rather it is about working on a single unified goal, selfless and caring for our partner's needs just as we do for ourselves.

• HEALING: Love is therapeutic in its nature, love brings with it a lot of healing powers and drives away fear and insecurity and eventually brings about protection. We feel at home whenever we are around those we love. True love does not hurt us in return because egos are removed, rather it gives us the strength with which to overcome the pains of the past allowing us the strength to love again, once, we have been broken before.

• COMPANIONSHIP: this to me is the most important because as human beings, we are all seeking companionship from others Biblically “ God saw that it is not good for the man to be alone” Therefore when it comes to love and loving we all look for that someone who will be by our side through the thick and thin throughout our lives. That someone, who makes us feel special, with whom we share our memories, our secrets, fight and laugh, thus” we all need somebody to lean on” Micheal Bolton. Love entails paying attention to the very ones whom we love, Being there for them in celebrations to rejoice, and in tears to cry with and console them. Love makes the world go round.

• COMMUNICATION: communicating is a human activity that is all-encompassing. We need communication just as we need food to stay alive. Therefore, making yourself understood and taking time to understand our partners and those around us is the foundation of love: for when we speak our feelings, it shows courage and generosity.

•  SACREDNESS: Love rids us of egos, brings joy, and brings us closer to our real selves. True love frees us of fear and attachment, grants us forgiveness and it comes to us when we are comfortable with ourselves and appreciative of who we are.

CONCLUSION

 Love is an all-encompassing phenomenon it is exhaustive and love is the ideal foundation upon which the doctrine of human brotherhood is built, it is expected of us to care for one another in the manner of love and do things not out of our own selfish desires, but out of love and consideration for the general good of us all... When we love, we make living much easier.
 The whole of man’s problem today is propelled by the absence of love and over-adherence to the whims and caprices of misguided religious egotism, nepotism, and greed which demean the dignity and sanctity of human life. If we take our time to look closely we will find out that love is the cheapest thing we can do for one another and they come to us at no cost. LOVE IS FREE  AND CAN BE FOUND  EVERYWHERE THAT WE WANT IT TO BE FOUND.