There are 96 Words for Love in Sanskrit

Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love; ancient Persian has eighty, Greek three, and English only one. This is indicative of the poverty of awareness or emphasis that we give to that tremendously important realm of feeling. Eskimos have thirty words for snow, because it is a life-and death matter to them to have exact information about the element they live with so intimately. If we had a vocabulary of thirty words for love ... we would immediately be richer and more intelligent in this human element so close to our heart. An Eskimo probably would die of clumsiness if he had only one word for snow; we are close to dying of loneliness because we have only one word for love. Of all the Western languages, English may be the most lacking when it come to feeling.- Robert A. Johnson, Jungian Psychologist [Fisher King, Page 6]

Words have fascinated me since I can remember. I was never one to be able to say what I felt. I always had to write it down or dance it. I still do. A big reason is the intricacy of my emotions never quite fits with the limited vocabulary that is on the tip of my tongue.

I'll never forget trying to teach a Japanese dancer to speak English on our subway rides home from classes in New York. We were both really young, but the experience opened a new portal of awareness for me about the complexity and limitations of our language. She would constantly ask why are there so many meanings for one word?

That was years ago, today those same words have even more meanings, especially if you include things like the Urban Dictionary. Our single word 'Love' must serve us for everything from the deep feelings we have towards someone we want to spend the rest of our life with to what psychologist, James Hillman described as humanity's feelings towards war. In his 2004 book, "A Terrible Love of War", he uses the term to describe an obsessive and all-consuming feeling much like we'd have for a soul mate.

What does that say about us? Is love in America confined to a single-word- one-dimensional-plane -- a plane with no room for subtleties, only polarities where experience darts back and forth from things like attraction to aversion, obsession to indifference, possession to loss? New York Times Op-Ed Columnist, David Brooks might say we take love to other dimensions through metaphor, like poet, Emily Barrett Browning, "...I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach [...]. In Brooks' April 11, 2011 article "Poetry for Everyday Life", he says we use about 10 metaphors for every 25 words. When we talk about relationships, he says we refer to health: That's a "healthy marriage". When we talk about an argument, he says we use war terms like turning your bedroom into a battleground.

Professor Robert Sapolsky's November 14, 2010, New York Times opinion blog, "This Is Your Brain on Metaphors", says the interesting thing about the brain is that it is wired to create literal and metaphorical versions of things. He also tells us the humiliating fact that the neurons in our brains are no better than those of a fruit fly - we just have a million to one more of them. The article goes into fascinating detail about how we trigger emotions, make decisions, and more through a patchwork of real and metaphorical stimuli. So, I encourage you to read it. For my purposes, I want to highlight an interesting question he brings up, "What are the consequences of the fact that evolution is a tinkerer and not an inventor, and has duct-taped metaphors and symbols to whichever pre-existing brain areas provided the closest fit?" If I purposely take that question out of context and apply it to the future of love in America, with our limited resources of words and symbols -- the consequences seem to progress into the pathetically repetitive and bland.

However, it's a whole new world now [I'm an eternal optimist], and what we have for our brain to tinker with is more than we think. We have quick-Internet-access to the archival myths and symbols of other cultures, along with richer languages like Sanskrit. I know the average American isn't known for taking leaps into linguistics; but imagine the opportunities - just think what we could do with 96 more words for love alone. We could revolutionize the art of expression and while we're at it maybe begin to reverse the hex from the tower of Babel. If we embrace the resources at hand, we can foster a more inventive evolution. Unifying the symbols, myths, language, and metaphors of other cultures to evolve our understanding, ability to communicate, and act on that multifaceted depth of feeling we called love.