I love you. I love my pen. I love to do sport. I love to dance. I don’t love her anymore. I love him as a friend.
In all of those sentences, we use love to express different meanings, so it becomes clear that the word became trivialized nowadays.
This is especially visible when we look at the ancient greeks. They had a differentiation into 3 types of love.
Eros
Eros is what we call the sexual type of love. It is when we desire someone. When we want to be close with that person. It is the feeling of falling in love.
In essence, eros is when we want to be in one with something or someone.
It is a love that the lovers express.
Philia
Philia is a friendship type of love. Cooperation. Working together.
This is also what is nowadays trivialized.
Nowadays a friend is a person who makes you feel good, glad.
But, as I see it, friendship should be an embracement of participating getting closer to the truth. And this process is not comfortable.
Philia can be found in the word philosophy. Which translated would mean a friendship love (Philo) for wisdom (Sophia).
Agape
This is the love of giving. It is what Christianity personified in an image of Christ. It is the love of creation and transforming. It transforms a non-person into a person.
It’s a love that parent has for their child.
As nowadays these terms got infused in one word we became more and more confused when speaking of love. We automatically assume that we will be understood when expressing ourselves in the word love, but most often we think in different terms.
So if someone says that they love you make sure that you understand what do they actually mean.