Have we, as a culture, forgotten what it means to love? From Netflix dramas to chart-topping music, love is almost always portrayed in one form: romantic, passionate, emotionally intense – eros. But what happens when we train ourselves to recognise only this kind of love? Have we quietly lost the ability not only to see, but to desire, the deeper and more enduring definitions of love that the ancient Greeks and Romans bestowed upon us: agape, philia, storge and caritas?
Scroll through almost any streaming platform, playlist or social media feed and you’ll notice that love is everywhere, but it is almost always the same kind of love: intense, immediate, burning quickly and narrated in heightened emotion. The storyline is always familiar: longing, attraction, heartbreak and reunion. Love, as we are shown it, is overwhelmingly eros: an all-consuming desire.
