Love as explained in the text takes on two forms, Eros and agape. I think that they both have great meaning and should be held at value in our lives. But they are two different ideas. Love is a feeling that we all experience, one that is truly beautiful. 

The first quote I would like to highlight was "love could be responsible for endless misery" (page 357). While this does not sound like it would make sense at first glance. I however see into this and agree with it. Love is a very strong feeling, and it often can cause people to be blind to things. When we love someone we do things for them that we otherwise would not do. A mother for example, most mothers would give up a kidney for their child if they needed to. That maternal love is a sort of love I cannot wait to experience later in my life as I understand it is different than anything else. Romantic love as well is different. When you truly love your partner you are more apt to maybe lie for them, or take care of them when they are ill. Not even just in the sense of love causing us to do things that we otherwise would not, when you truly love someone, losing them is especially difficult. 

The next quote that I would like to speak about is "physical desire initially attracts the pair" (page 359). This quote looks like there is not much to it but the meaning behind it is something that I think about often. When two people have physical relations before they have an emotional bond, it tends to cause them to think that there is an emotional bond. I am not saying that people in relationships that began that way are not going to last, I just think that there are more risks and challenges when that is how it starts. I myself have a friend that got into a relationship in that manner. Her and her boyfriend have been together for several months now, but they aren't really connected the way you typically see. Their relationship is 80% physical and hardly emotional. I constantly hear from this friend about how the boyfriend does all these things she does not agree with and handles himself in public different than she would prefer. All things she would've known had they not jumped to physical relations the first day they met. I am not saying that I do not think they would be together if they had done things differently, but I think it would have saved them several arguments.

The last thing that I would like to highlight is "to be alive, to be human, is to change, eventually to be different from before" (page 362). We sort of touched on loving someone through change in class but did not spend much time on it. When we love someone we love them as a whole and not just one feature. I believe we touched on people getting divorced for lesser reasons than in the past. Maybe this is due to people getting married just to get married nowadays but this is a really interesting topic to me. All of us humans grow and age. Sure there are ways to prevent physical display of aging, or mask it, but it is inevitable. Loving someone in my opinion means loving them despite all of that. Now I understand that people can change in ways other than physical. Thought processes can change, outlooks can change, mental illnesses can develop. Those instances I can sort of understand not being able to truly love the person the same way because its like they are a completely different person. But where does the line draw between loving someone regardless and admitting you can no longer love them. A question I don't think anyone would be able to explain, but one that weighs on a lot of peoples minds.

Janaro, R. P., & Altshuler, T. C. (2017). The Art of Being Human: The humanities as a technique for living (11th ed.). Pearson.