L for Love

In English we have only one word for this; but in Greek there were at least four. So when we use the word in English we are thinking about several different things. Would you agree that these are different sorts of loves?

• ​​​​​​​I love cats
• I love doing jigsaws
• I love my children
• I love my spouse
• I love God
• I love Star Trek

Greek had all this sorted out centuries ago. There are at least four words for our one word of Love, 

• Storge
• Philia
• Eros
• Agape

C S Lewis, in his wonderful book 'The Four Loves', describes them in detail; in brief, Storge is the love we have towards familiar people, and perhaps best understood as Affection. It's not intense but comfortable, like an old pair of slippers. Philia is the love we feel for our friends, that we have chosen, and this can be very deep. Next up is Eros, often thought of only as sexual or romantic love, but can also be seen as the urge to life itself, striving to grow and develop; then, greatest of all, Agape or unconditional, love that 'looks on tempests and is never shaken...Love alters not with [Time's] brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom...'(Shakespeare Sonnet 116).

Why does all this matter? Because it seems to me, and even to many management theorists these days, that the most important aspect of life is how well we have loved. Our relationships, at whatever level, can be our greatest joy or our greatest stumbling block. This matters at work as well - after all we do spend a lot of time there. 

What do you think? 

Then we have L for Letting Go...

This partly relates to what I've said previously about Forgiveness; and it's useful in other contexts too. 

In the pandemic we faced loss, uncertainty, anxiety, vulnerability and a lack of control. When we really think about it perhaps we see that in fact we do not have very much control at all about what happens in our lives. 

Sudden illness strikes. Terrorist attack. Cars crash. And everything changes in an instant. At such times we see that our illusion of control is just that, an illusion, although a 'very persistent one'. 

It's tempting and even normal to grieve for what we had, say Before Covid, but sooner or later we have to 'let go' into the new situation so that we are open to that, and to what it may bring us. I'm realising this myself these days, not so much because of Covid, but because of a serious family illness that we are now living with, up close, every day.

I keep in mind what Viktor Frankl famously said; everything can be taken from a person except their freedom to choose their response. 

What would be a good choice for you today?