The Nine Expressions of Love

   The Greeks have already sat down and told you what love is, dividing it into four types. C.S. Lewis picked up and treated the topic in his famous treatise, The Four Loves.
   Now it comes my turn to class the types of love.
   It is care and concern, the desire that another person have comfort and that all may be well with them. "Bless them in their work," says the person who loves another. "Prosper all they do. Bring them life's pleasures. Bring them life's treasures." This is love.
   And, so is this: It is passing kind judgement upon another, being charitable in our thoughts, and not dissing them. It is forgiveness of their faults and not manufacturing faults that do not exist. It is, when a fault is seen, looking for a reason for what caused it. Love is not a rush to judgement, but a judicial search for reason.
   Love is warmth. It is exuding a sense of happiness when seeing another. This is the third type of love.
   Love is work -- work for another. It is when you do something for another, or give them a gift. This type of love can come out of the other types, but it deserves to be classed as a type of love in itself.
   Love is companionship. It is sharing time, thoughts and emotions. It is being there for the moments in another's life. It is spending your existence with another. This might be the most common expression of love of all, the type of love practiced the most.
   Love is appreciation for the accomplishments of others. This type of love is related to the type where you do not diss another. But, a person can not dis another without having an appreciation for what they do. So, this is a category of its own.
    Well, I'm running out of thoughts. How about a tenderness, almost a reverence for another? Should this be considered as a class of love in and of itself? It is the gentleness of feelings for another. If warmth of feelings toward another can be a type of love, so can gentleness.
   Do we add one more, the physical excitement one can have toward another? It is on any listing, I would imagine, that anyone has ever made of the types of love.
   As I close, I remember as I sat down to write, opening an article on C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves. Thankfulness for what another has done for you is a type of love. Those who depend on others for care often have this type of love.
   These are the nine lives of love, then. It is bedtime, and if I am to think of others, it will have to come another night.