OPINION: RUBY: How Do I Love Thee?

Feb. 16—I think of Valentine's Day as a rather minor holiday, and yet, according to a worksheet my students did last week, it's second only to Christmas in card sales.

I sort of wonder about that. Is the statistic based on single card sales, or does it include boxed Christmas cards and those 32 card packs we buy for classroom use? As I always caution my students, you have to consider what the numbers don't tell you.

Running into Kroger two days ago, I thought someone must have gotten the flower order wrong. Aside from the front of the store looking like a glorified flower shop, the whole store had displays of flowers. Sort of like, if you resisted them at the front, here they were with the Valentine's Day candy, in the deli, at the back—seemingly anywhere there was a bit of space.

However, my interest right now isn't in cards or flowers or even candy. Well, okay, my interest is always in candy (especially chocolate), but I'm trying to restrain myself at the moment . . .

Right now I'm interested in the word "love." We are sadly remiss in English, as we have only one word to express the emotion. So we use it for everything. I love my daughter. I loved this morning's sunrise. I love hot dogs and chocolate crème donuts and my cozy fleece pajamas.

At some point the word starts losing any real meaning, as it encompasses both the banal and a deeply serious emotion. In order to regain meaning, we add words like "deeply" or "sincerely" or even "really" to it.

Or we seek a synonym to explicitly describe the feeling. One thesaurus.com site says it has "173 synonyms and antonyms"—mostly synonyms. Anything from "like" and "weakness" to "idolize" and "addicted."

Of course, your intended listener probably wouldn't want to hear "I like you" or "I have a weakness for you" if they were hoping for "I love you," but it might work for "I have a weakness for hot dogs." and that pretty well describes what I feel for chocolate, too.

I once read that a language's vocabulary reflects the importance of something by the number of words used to identify it. For example, Eskimo-Aleut has some 50 words to label snow.

Evidently in Greece, it was important to know what kind of love they were dealing with, because the ancients came up with seven words to describe it. We are probably familiar with "eros," as it forms the basis for "erotic," and I guess we all know what that means.

But then there's also "philia," describing friendships of a deep nature, what we might call "soul-mates" in English. Next is "erotoropia," which is a playful, child-like, possibly flirtatious love.

"Storge" follows that; an unconditional, familial type of love that could also describe patriotism. Then we have "Philantia," which is a compassionate self-love—but not selfishness. Philantia stems from a philosophical idea that if you can't love yourself, i.e. accept yourself, then you can't experience love or caring for others.

"Pragma" is a committed, compassionate love with long-term interests. This would be the love necessary to stay together and raise a family. The "for better or worse, in sickness and in health" kind of love.

The seventh love, "agape," is an inclusive love for God, nature, strangers, the less fortunate. It nurtures empathy for humanity and may result is altruistic works.

Roman Krznaric says that "the ancient Greeks found diverse kinds of love in relationships with a wide range of people—friends, family, spouses, strangers, and even themselves."

Thus, different words more clearly defined different types of love. Not a bad idea, I think, because when I say "I love . . ." it may take a paragraph to explain what I mean. If I say "I love hot dogs" and then you ask "As much as you love me?," I may be in for a lot of explaining.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning asked "How do I love thee?" and then took a whole sonnet to explain. Shakespeare took about 154.

Well, as I said, English has many synonyms for love. They are not particularly interchangeable, but they do address the problem of having just one, all-inclusive term for the sentiment. and since we don't speak Greek, that is what we're left with.

Meanwhile, I am about at the end of my ability to restrain myself, so I am going to head to the kitchen and feed my weakness for that candy that I like so much it's becoming an addiction.