bhaskar saikia

People say that there is lack of love in this world. Had there been enough love, then there would not have so much of troubles on this planet. Well, this made me remember what I had read once about three types of love in his great book, ‘The Pilgrimage’ by Paulo Coelho.

The three types of love that he described were – eros, philos and agape—all Greek words.

As per what I’ve understood, I would like to discuss the meaning of each of these words briefly and try to see, if we can find out the reason for so much of troubles plaguing our world.

Eros is the love that exists between two people. In this kind of love, people are willing to go extra miles for their loved ones. Eros is of two types, positive eros when it does good only and negative eros when it does bad.
And this is considered as the lowest form of love among the three types!

The second word, Philos means love for friends or you can say for humanity—the empathy for every men and women. This is the love for which the earth is able to sustain eight billion people, because people care about others; cry when tragedy struck in some places like tsunamis, flood, earthquakes, famine, riots, etc. and enjoy shared happiness during festivals, sporting meets, etc.

And the third type of love – agape, is the love that we feel for every creation within this Universe. It’s the love that speaks for everyone and everything; the love we feel for every living being that breathes. It is the love we feel for every rock, mountain, rain, snow, river, ocean, cloud, emotion, meteor, laughter, dance, play, work. This is actually falling in love with ourselves, our surroundings and the entire Universe. Because of agape, the Universe is held at its destined place. And hence agape is considered the highest form of love.

Now, let us go back to our earlier point on the lack of love and problems engulfing humanity because of it.

But, I would rather like to take a contrary view on this topic.

I believe it’s not the lack of love, but enough of love that is the root cause of us being in such a mess!

The problem is enough of love – ‘the negative eros’, who is actually responsible for our troubles. Like I said, Eros – the love between two people is responsible, for it breeds nepotism, encourages bribery and corruption, directly or indirectly.

What the world needs is less of Eros, (for it has always been enough) and more of Philos and Agape. Had there been more of Philos, the world would not have witnessed so many wars and hostilities. Had there been more of Agape, the world would not have witnessed so much of biological extinctions and global environmental destruction.

The words like ‘global warming’ and ‘pollution’ would never have made into our dictionary and vocabulary. What the world needs is respect for each and every creation of the Universe; respect to co-exist, without interfering in each others destined destinies.

What we need is Agape to engulf us. In the words of Paulo Coelho, ‘Agape needs to consume us’.