L.O.V.E.

Introduction

Hey guys!

We’ve decided to start our blog which focuses on human traits. We know it’s much spoken of already but hey what’s wrong with a bit more perspective into the topic, right? So, first and foremost let’s introduce the writers and the photographer of this blog to you. The writers are coined as Mitali Mehta, Pritha Patel and Vasvi Desai by the nomenclature of the Hindu guidelines. We also have our super talented photographer Chirantan Jain who is fondly referred to as Archie. We will be open to or rather waiting for your comments and feedback!

Alright, let’s get to the topic at hand. If you want to know a little more about us you can see our profiles and if you want to know a lot more, then just read the blog regularly because we’re all like open books. We like to express through our work.

Love. Seems like such a generic or simple word. Defining love has always been a controversial topic. Some people say it cannot be defined, some call it a disease, some say it cannot be measured but only be felt and each person’s definition varies from the other. Nowadays when we talk about ‘love’ all people could think about is the lovey-dovey one. But what is love, actually? So, the four of us got thinking. We decided let’s put it up in whatever way we want and see which one is more insane!

Everyone has experienced love once in their life, be it in any form. Don’t get us wrong, we’re not talking about the gooey awesome feeling that people keep talking about in movies and books- the one where you’re on cloud nine. God, no. We, ourselves, haven’t experienced romantic love yet. So, you’d be wondering how on Earth we know what we are talking about. Love is all about being happy- doing something that makes you happy or being with people who make you happy or simply being happy for you. If we check the dictionary it states that – it is a strong feeling of affection or a great interest and pleasure in something. So, it is not constricted to one aspect considering it as a generic term, we see that love is multi-faceted and has many aspects with respect to various people, things, etc.

People generally think that love can only be among themselves .But what we always forget is the love for ourselves. Loving ourselves first so that others love us the way we are. It is all about the happiness you feel in doing small things for yourself. Listening to a favourite song, following a hobby, playing a game, eating your favourite food or simply dancing-it can be anything. Being in love doesn’t always have to be with something or someone. After all, the person who knows you the best is you, yourself!

What we’re trying to say is that this blog will also talk about Romantic Love as one of its themes but not as the predominant one. We’d like to think that love exists in many forms like the love we experience for people around us; it is the happiness that you feel when you share a bond with certain people. It can be anyone- parents, friends, your spouse, siblings or even a beloved pet (yes, the people who know me are going to greatly judge me for writing this because I am absolutely terrified of any animal or bug, but if we talk about love, even though I have no great bond with animals, I have seen people who do, so it would be a topic I could never negate). That affection and sense of belonging is all that love stands for according to us. The people who count on you and believe in you so much, you start believing too; who make you see the sun when you are shadowed by clouds; the people who love you for being you and accept you for who you are, with all your imperfections. The once in a lifetime kind of treasured ones whom you will never want to lose.

All of us have varying ideas about love and come to think of it, we have a LOT of ideas. The way they differ is based slightly on our personalities. Pritha is our undeterred optimist. She always has the bright-eyed view of the world. Vasvi is the practical, analytical one with a slight hint of romance that takes all that analysis to a whole new level. Mitali is the crazy one. She doesn’t like publicising love or giving out her opinions too much but people do value her advice on this topic a lot.

 

Love has a great history to it too. The only thing we know about the history of love, the widely marketed one is about cupid or Saint Valentine. We’re going to show you a new side to the history of love. In English language there is only one word for this emotion and it is ‘love’. But, in Greek there are different words that can describe the various types of love. There are mainly four words still used in the Greek language whereas, there used to be about thirty words in ancient Greek. The four main types are:

Storge: It means the love in a family. For example, love of parents or grandparents for children or grandchildren, and vice versa. Even love of foster parents for the children under their care. It is broadly classified as the love that every member of a family has for each other and is believed to be unconditional.

Agape: It is better known as humanity in our dialect. The sorrow we feel for fellow human beings when they are under some crisis or some nation which faced a natural calamity. It is regardless of their shortcomings or faults. This is the type of love which encourages us towards social welfare and social service.

Phileo: It is the love that you develop out of shared experiences for your co-workers or friends. It is mainly platonic love which makes you want to be friends with someone.

Eros: It is the romantic and passionate love that is based on powerful magnetism between two people. It is better known as the “in love” feeling.

There are several other words to describe self-respect or love for self. But I will not elaborate on it here; this is just to broaden everyone’s scope on love. Too much history for you? Let’s come back to the present. ‘Phileo’ seems to be quite the rage among youngsters these days. It is just given a new name and might I say, avoided like the plague! Yes, I am talking about the world famous ‘friend-zone’. Getting Friend-zoned is scarier for adolescents than getting Ebola these days! But, why can love not exist between good friends. You probably started thinking halfway into this article that none of us are in a relationship currently so how could we know so much about love? Well, here’s a shout out to most of the single people out there- we are told to administer love advice possibly more than any counsellor!

We know a lot of people who might judge us for writing about love, but we also know of the few we’ve managed to help in their times of need when they had a tiff with their loved ones. We also know that those are the people who’d read this blog because they know that for some reason unknown to us, we do know what we’re talking about. Our blog is going to follow a theme each time we post something and each time henceforth you’d get three perspectives on the same topic through the writings of Pritha, Vasvi and Mitali. Although love is such a small word, it has a vast variety for us to talk about. So, do expect a couple of posts about it as mentioned earlier, but love is not the only theme that we will talk about. We thought that instead of controversial, let’s write about inspirational (won’t that be a change). The core of our blog is Human Traits. As we go along you’ll see what we’re made of. Do keep in touch and check your social networking sites for our next post’s update. Like our Facebook page for updates and most importantly, leave comments. What we do is irrelevant without your precious feedback. We are ready for whatever you want to say or any questions you have that we could help you with.

DISCLAIMER: We do not claim the rights for all these pictures. Some of them have been taken off the internet. No copyrights reserved.