Happy Valentines Day!

For most people, Valentine’s Day evokes images of chalky heart candies embossed with choice nuggets such “Be mine” and “Luv U”, red roses, and hastily purchased greeting cards. This kind of love, regardless of how cheesily expressed, is typically the purview of romantic love between two individuals. But Valentine’s Day is only the commercial expression of one kind of love. Beloved author C.S. Lewis writes that there are four different types of love: affection, friendship, eros, and charity. 

To celebrate the day, here are some thoughts on the four loves from C.S. Lewis:

Affection

“We take [affection] for granted: and this taking for granted, which is an outrage in erotic love, is here right and proper up to a point. It fits the comfortable, quiet nature of the feeling. . . . Affection almost sinks or seeps through our lives. It lives with humble, un-dress, private things; soft slippers, old clothes, old jokes, the thump of a sleepy dog’s tail on the kitchen floor, the sound of a sewing-machine…” 

Friendship

“In Friendship…we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,’ can truly to say to every group of Christian friends ‘You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another. The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument but which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others.” 

Eros

“Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.” 

But also…

“People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on ‘being in love’ forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change—not realizing that, when they have changed, the glamor will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. . . . In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction.” 

Charity 

Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.” 

Valentine’s-Day-style love falls into the eros category. However, if we think about love more broadly, like C.S. Lewis does, we can open new ways for us to celebrate Valentine’s Day. We love our dogs and pet goldfish, the barrista at your local coffee shop who always knows your order, our spouse, our favorite ice cream spoon, our grandparents, the middle school teacher who ignited your love for biology, the twisting branches of an old ironwood tree. No matter where we look, our most special moments, whether in the big picture of our lives or in the tiny tasks and habits of our daily living, are filled with love. Yes, love looks different in each of these cases, but it is still love. And that is always worth celebrating. 

Quotations found in:

C.S. Lewis, The Beloved Works of C.S. Lewis (New York: The Inspirational Press, 1960, 1984, 1986)

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: Collins, 2012).