This Valentine's week, open yourself to the joys and regrets love can bring

Ursula K Le Guin

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

We are a week away from Valentine’s Day and soon we will be inundated with mushy hearts. Some people love the Valentine’s week. Some cringe at the very thought of Valentine’s. For some Valentine’s is a reason to celebrate and for others, a time for regret. It resembles the yin and yang of life.

Over 2500 years ago, Greek philosophers debated the purpose of love. They came up with four types of love. Socrates states that the highest purpose of love is to become a philosopher or, literally, a lover of wisdom.

In his book The Four Loves, CS Lewis enumerates them.

Storge is about love and affection and a bond of empathy. It is described as the most natural love. For example, the love of parents for their children. The moment a child is born, the bonds of love are formed. Some might even argue that these bonds were formed even before birth.

Lewis considered that 90% of lasting happiness came from storge.

Lewis was not naive. He stated that given its nature, this unconditional and unfettered love could lead to smothering, jealousy, and ambivalence. I guess we see that when we come across the proverbial “spoilt brats”.

Philia, a concept developed by Aristotle, is about loyalty to friends, family, and community. It also connotes the love of an activity. Here is the beauty of philia. It is the least natural of all loves. You are free to choose your friends and siblings with whom you will form a bond. The love need not be just of friends. You could love your work or an art or a hobby.

Lewis makes a very interesting observation.

CS Lewis

To the Ancients, friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.

He is so right. There are very few poems written in the modern world on friendship. We have stories of love, war, battles, but so few where friendships take centrestage. Let’s look at the ancient texts of India. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata celebrate friendship and kinship. There are so few movies made on friendships. Movies and stories depicting supreme successes of the protagonist fail to bring to the fore the role of friendships. There are some fantastic movies that do, like 3 Idiots, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the magnum opus Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and, of course, Shawshank Redemption.

Watch this two-minute video from Shawshank, and tell me that friendship is not about love.

Friendship carries with it a great responsibility. Friendships are best demonstrated when a friend can stand up to a friend, and fulfill their responsibility of being their harshest critic. Otherwise, it can devolve into plain cliques and cronyism.

Eros, or intimate love: In 385 BC, 1400 years ago, Plato wrote The Symposium. Literally translated, symposium means a “drinking party”. What better topic would you give to a symposium than love? The Symposium explores the genesis, purpose, and nature of love. Seven philosophers give a speech on the subject of love.

According to Plato, Socrates’ love transcended the boundaries of physical to spiritual. Love aspires you to reach for the truth or the search for the truth, or what we call transcendence.

Plato’s contribution to love came to be known as platonic love or platonic relationships, intimate love without the physical attraction, where people sign an unwritten bond of loyalty.

Eros is also capable of great damage. A thousand ships of war were launched for love. Great texts were written about the tragedy of love.

Agape or unconditional God love. Henry George Lidell and Robert Scott write in their seminal text A English – Greek Lexicon that agape is an act of “brotherly love and charity; the love of God for man and of man for God."

CS Lewis

Eros in all his splendor... may urge to evil as well as good.

With so many wars being waged in the name of God and in the name of love, it is becoming clear that love and regret are inextricably linked.

When relationships flourish, they give us a deep sense of meaning and happiness. When relationships whither, it leaves in its wake, acrimony and rancour.

Now let’s explore the second part of this column. What do we regret the most?

Regret is a common state of emotion. That was on the minds of Victoria Medevec and Thomas Gilovic, when they set to investigate what people regret the most and whether the regret has a long-term impact on our lives.

In their studies, they asked participants from various walks of life to recall their biggest regrets.

Regret arising from an action. When they did something which backfired or failed. Obviously, the emotional pain was high, but as time passed the pain of the regret diminished over time. It could be asking someone out and being rejected. It could be starting a business and attending to its bankruptcy. It could be marrying the wrong man.

A very useful consequence of regret arising from an action was that time was a great healer, and more importantly, a great teacher.

Regret arising from inaction. When they failed to take act upon a potential opportunity.  When they did not take an action and the opportunity went by.

Thoughts like, ‘what would have happened if I had worked harder for the exam? What if I had taken that banking job instead?’

Here is where it gets really interesting. As time went by, the regret of squandering an opportunity grew more painful over time.

If your actions lead to a lousy consequence, you can always course correct your journey. If you have not yet started your journey, the only companion is regret.

The regret of “why did I do…” does not last longer than the regret of “what if I had done…”

So what does regret have to do with love? For that, you must watch this video.

It is a story of Jane and James texting each other. They are obviously very fond of each other and enjoy each other’s company. But are hesitant to say so. They want to appear “cool”. Their fingers type out what their mind really wants them to do. Unfortunately, social norms of coolness prevail. We will never know how the story ends. What I do know is this. I was rooting for them and groaned every time they hit the backspace button and hit enter to send out banal messages. I bet you were rooting for them too.

It got me thinking. How many times did I spurn the opportunity to build more meaningful relationships? How many times did I not tell my friends how much they meant to me? How many times have I hit the backspace on my own dreams? How many times did I see my work as just a bunch of activities and not for its true impact? I have had love all around me, in various forms and shapes. I had closed myself to the love that the universe was sending my way.

Love is also misunderstood as only the love of a significant other. We equate love with romantic love, passionate love, unconditional love, and everlasting love.

It is not. The Greeks have so eloquently demonstrated the genesis and purpose of love. Love is about family, friends and your social relationships. Love is about your unconditional surrender to a higher being. Love is about caring for what truly matters to you. Love is about your work and the impact that you bring to this world. Love is about the pursuit of dreams and aspirations, accomplishment and achievement, goals and milestones. Love is about finding wisdom.

In your pursuit of what you love, do you want to regret the choices you make or the choices you did not make? Rather than just mulling over it, make a wise and timely choice, but make a choice. If you think there is a risk, put pen to paper and seek the wisdom to mitigate the risk. Make an informed choice, but make a choice.

You don’t need to find love. Love will find you everywhere. You do not even need to look for it. Just open yourself up to love.

Love is not blind. It seeks you out with great precision. It works its magic on you. It may take different forms of shape.

Love is completely conditional. It is conditional on your action and effort. It plays within the boundaries that you deem fit.

Love makes no everlasting demands. It exists right in that little micro-moment. Like a delicate and fragile dewdrop, as your mind wanders away it can vanish into the ether. Love is about those little micro-moments of connection. 

What if a love does not return back? If it does not, then you need to open yourself to other opportunities of love. You might want to explore different forms of love. There are so many of them.

This week of Valentine’s I wish you much love. Thank you for showing me love when you click on your mobile phones to read this column.

I don’t think I thanked you enough, dear reader, for your love. I hope to return it someday.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

The author is the Founder of The Positivity Company, where he helps business leaders become more positive and productive.