Love is a subject that has mystified the human race for as long as we can remember. Philosophers pondered over it, the common man felt it, but there aren’t really any words to properly explain love.

The Greeks came up with four words for it: eros, philia, storge, and agape, however, love branches out and goes by more names than just these four. It is love, this utterly abstract concept—what some call a mere chemical reaction. It’s love that shapes us. It influences whom with which we become close with, what we do with our lives, what our passions are, when we choose to stand up for a cause, and who we ultimately fall in love with. It affects every single aspect of our lives, be it our childhood or the end of our days.

The question is, what is love? Why do we love? And lastly, why does it influence us so easily?
While love is a largely abstract concept, it can be identified in our everyday lives. Couples holding hands, a stranger stopping to help someone in need, a gardener taking great care with his flower beds; all of these could be viewed as acts of love. Even when one uses the word love, its meaning fluctuates. Comments such as, “I love your dress; it’s so lovely” or, “I love my mother” have very different meanings.

The ambiguousness of the word allows for the concept to grow and swell into many different areas and meanings. This is where the four words for love by Greek come into play. Eros describes a passionate love; it is one that seeks “transcendental beauty-the particular beauty of an individual reminds us of true beauty that exists in the world of Forms or Ideas” (Mosely), and one smitten with eros is appropriately deemed, “he who loves the beautiful is called a lover because he partakes of it” (Phaedrus, Plato). Philia is associated with bonds and fondness; it is the kind of love one holds for their family and closest friends. Storge is an extremely similar term to philia; it stands for the love a parent has for their child. Agape is the unconditional love. It describes the paternal and everlasting love that God holds for all of mankind, though it is commonly interpreted as brotherly love for all of humanity.These main forms of love allow us to see how and where they might influence our lives. Agape could be the influence that drives human empathy. Eros compels people to enter relationships that would otherwise be undesirable in terms of emotional and physical care. Philia and storge branch into why we care about family issues that seem irrelevant in most cases. In this way, we see the most common influences of love in our lives.

Perhaps love is so influential in our lives because we need to feel the acceptance it gives. Love pushes us to do more than we thought possible. We socialize, interact, and rely upon each other for all the different kinds of love. Perhaps we love because it is what we were predestined to do. It seems trivial, to explore this concept when we remember that we are but small people on a small Earth in a gigantic universe. However, it seems as though humans were born to love and to be loved. We can’t be for certain. It’s a beautiful thought, though, to believe that love is above the mortality of our brutish, carnal and animalistic world; that love transcends our faults and impurities and burns iridescently and immortally in and beyond the darkness of the fallible and temporal realm of the Earth.

Still, this doesn’t answer the entire question of influence. How does such an abstract concept completely rule over our lives? While we understand that social interactions and benefits are derived from love, this cannot be the only cause. Love is a strong, powerful emotion that is felt in countless forms. In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the main female protagonist, Anna, is a married aristocrat in 19th century Russia who embarks on a passionate, scandalous affair with a cavalry officer named Vronsky (Tolstoy). The affair ultimately leads to her demise—suicide by throwing herself in front of a train—because she believed Vronsky had grown tired of her and would marry a different Russian aristocrat even though she had given up everything in order to be with him (Tolstoy). This includes her beloved son and her once perfect reputation in Russian society. Socrates once said, “The hottest love has the coldest end.” Such a statement couldn’t be truer than in Anna Karenina’s case. This is but one example of how love can negatively influence us by breeding doubt, hatred, and suicidal tendencies.

Dying for love is martyrdom; the only people who truly feel its pain are those involved, and love can be a fickle thing. Until a person “experiences” the feeling of love, they cannot fully understand the concept. However, almost all people have experienced some form of love in their lifetime. Whether it was a deep emotional bond with their parents in the form of philia or storge, or it was the romantic love of their life; nearly all people have tasted the sweetness and bitterness of love and love lost in their lifetime. The impact of love is hard hitting, and it’s no wonder why. It completely changes the scope of one’s world. Love can make you cross thousands of miles just to be with someone, or it can drive you thousands of miles away. Love is what drove Brutus to kill Ceasar in Shakespeare’s Julius Ceasar. Brutus loved and admired Ceasar and saw him as a dear friend, but he loved Rome more. In the end, Brutus betrays Ceasar because Cassius, another Roman senator, convinces him that Ceasar is trying to turn the republican Rome into a monarchy that he would assume the helm of. In this way, Cassius abuses Brutus’ love for Rome in order to convince him to join the other conspirators against Ceasar and eventually murder him. We see the influence for an ideal reign supreme over a person in this case.

These are but a few simple examples of the influences love has on the human species. It can be a beautiful force that works for the benefit of people through the benevolence of human nature. Love can also contort our beliefs and ideals until they become insidious and heinous.
All we can be certain of is that is we are human, and humans feel this emotion that has been named love. And love is something that influences us, no matter what we may do or where we may be in our lives.