A beautiful illustrated exploration of intercultural definitions of love

While curating content for my professional social media pages
at work today I came across this article 
on the emotions related to love which are not easily expressed with words.

Because I relate to this so vividly in my personal life, I thought it would be nice to share my favorites from the collection of twelve wonderful illustrations which depict a non-English word and its closest possible English translation.  

Anticipation, Iktsuarpok in the Inuit dialect.  The feeling that someone is coming to visit, and the act of constantly going outside to check if they have arrived. 
This is a feeling so common among the beginning stages
of  falling in love.  But it is so common among other phases of life as well.  Friendships and family ties are wrought with anticipation for reunion-even when the time spent apart has not been so long. Which brings us to our next word...


Viraha is the Hindi word for what happens when we realize that we are in love with someone only through being separated from them.  Absence, as the saying goes, makes the heart grow fonder.  When we nurture unsure feelings for another person and they are suddenly no longer available to us, the ache caused by the absence or the absence of ache can be the telling factor as to how strong the feelings really are. 


And finally, Geborgenheit the German word for the feeling of safety associated with the close proximity of loved ones.  From a romantic partner to friends or relatives, those we care deeply about not only make us feel more safe and secure, but make us want to create a safer world in which they can exist.  


 Love, like happiness, sadness, grief, and joy is one of the culturally universal concepts which all humans can understand and relate to.  We have all loved someone or something.  We will all experience loss of whatever we love, and we have those collective experiences - both of loving and losing, to bind us together as the emotional, spiritual beings which we are meant to exist as.