Förste vecka: älskar

I adore, no, I love, the idea of the word “love” being broken down into different kinds of intensity and meaning, as in eros, philia and agape. I’ve heard about the concept of love being more particular and specified in non-Western cultures and I am keen on the idea. It makes me wonder how much weight a word can have when it can be used in such a variety of ways. "I love macaroni and cheese!" "I love my girlfriend!" If my boyfriend loved me on the same level as his mac and cheese, I would be thinking it’s time for a serious reevaluation of our commitment to each other. If an alien from another planet were to land and try to learn our language, and heard how we threw the word “love” around, what would he deduce its meaning was? There is also the distinction between loving someone/something and being in love with something/someone. In an Interpersonal Communications class I took a while ago, I learned that being in love with someone is more akin to an infatuation, a fleeting feeling. Loving someone was more permanent and a deeper emotional bond. Ther e are obvious levels of intensity in fondness, yet the English language seems to stretch the word "love" to cover them all. It's an interesting linguistic situation and I'm nerd enough to be fascinated by it. :)