It started in late January. You couldn’t miss it – local shops and supermarkets suddenly began turning red. Streamers, decorations, roses, poinsettia plants, chocolate wrappers, and even on-sale items of clothing all had an inevitable redness about them. One could have been forgiven for assuming an overnight Communist coup had taken place!
But of course it was all in anticipation of February – Valentine’s month – the month of LOVE.
The cynical part of me questioned whether this blushing display was truly an inspired celebration of romantic love; or was it instead rooted in a different sort of love, the love of money, fuelled by the sweet smell of commercial opportunity? In any case, it got me thinking about different kinds of love and the significance of the colour red.
Some interesting red facts:
Did you know that visual exposure to the colour red has the effect of increasing our heart rates, blood flow and body temperature? It also stimulates the senses of smell and taste, and fires up the adrenal glands which energise us into a state of alertness. Red also stimulates appetite.
Emotional experiences such as rage, shame, and yes, even lust, cause bright red oxygen-rich blood to move towards the skin. That’s why, for example, we get red-faced with embarrassment.
Does red give a sporting advantage?
Believe it or not, an article in the journal Nature offered compelling evidence that soccer teams achieve better match results when they wear predominantly red shirts rather than other colours. (Ref: ‘Red enhances human performance in contests; Nature’; 18th May 2005). Maybe Liverpool Football Club knew this all along!
Health benefits of red?
In the past, various cultures held a belief that the colour red promotes good health and offers protection from illness. In ancient Rome, for example, children would wear red coral to protect them from disease, and in China, children wore red coloured clothing to support good health.
Other meanings associated with red
The colour red has also been culturally associated with a whole range of things including life, health, vigour, war, courage, anger, love, and religious fervour. The common denominator seems to be ‘Passion’, which is a neat way of bringing us back to the idea of Love.
What is Love? – Maybe the Ancient Greeks had it right?
There are, of course, different kinds of love. The Ancient Greek philosophers, for example, maintained that there are three principal categories, namely, Eros, Philia and Agape.
Eros – a passionate, intense desire often linked with sexual desire, hence the derived word ‘erotic’. For Plato, however, a fundamental human need is for beauty as an objective thing that we can never fully satisfy until we die. He maintained that the beauty we see in people, works of art, ideas and so on, provides only a vague glimpse of a much deeper objective beauty. So, in his view, to truly love is to love the ideal objective form of beauty rather than the less satisfying shrouded form we see around us.
Philia – an appreciation or fondness that we experience in friendships, loyalty to family, and perhaps to our work, or community, and so on. For Aristotle, friendship is underpinned by unsolicited acts of kindness done without drawing attention to them. He went on to suggest that philia includes calmness, fairness, mutual admiration and forgiveness. In his view, Philia cannot exist amongst gossips, aggressive personalities, or unjust and quarrelsome people.
He maintained that to achieve the highest form of love we must first love ourselves, but not in the form of pleasure-seeking, self-glorification, or immediate gratification. For him, it’s far more about contemplating worthy actions, living pleasantly, sharing with others, being thoughtful and striving to live a virtuous life.
Agape – represents the paternal love of God for mankind, and of mankind for God. It encapsulates a love of all humanity. It’s unconditional, without needing or demanding reciprocation. The Judeo-Christian tradition speaks to this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5) and “love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). It suggests an absolute devotion that incorporates Plato’s idea of the love of beauty involving passion, awe and desire.
The Enneagram and Love – A Personal View
For me, the Enneagram isn’t only an extraordinary model of human behaviour; it’s also a process map, and, in a way, the process is all about learning to fall in love, with ourselves, with other people, and ultimately with our Creator. It’s also a mirror and magnifying glass.
As a map, the Enneagram can guide us on journeys of self-discovery. As we navigate and engage with our internal landscapes we inevitably gain profound insights into how and why we behave as we do, and even into who we really are.
The map becomes a mirror that reflects back our ‘ways of being’ in the world. As we gaze at our reflections we almost immediately recognise certain aspects of ourselves. But parts of the reflected images are shrouded in shadow; their broad outline doesn’t quite fit what we know about ourselves and yet they are strangely familiar. It can feel like waking up from a deep sleep, aware that we were dreaming yet unable to hold onto the dream and recall the details.
There’s a good chance that we won’t like all that the mirror reflects, even if we know it’s accurate. We may want to turn away, deny that it’s us, and become angry, upset, or depressed. This is a rejection, or non-acceptance, of self, and quite the opposite of love.
We need self-compassion, openness, genuine curiosity and courage as we trade the mirror for a magnifying glass and look more deeply into ourselves. As we do this, we inevitably discover something remarkable, something or someone quite beautiful and fragile that we can’t help falling in love with, not in any arrogant way but with lots of humility and compassion.
This is the beginning of self-acceptance. We’re by no means perfect, and yet we’re ok, we can own our flaws, we can be with ourselves, vulnerable and authentic. We can allow ourselves to be forgiven. We can see and accept our strengths without becoming prideful. We can commit to developing our understanding of self and expanding our capabilities.
When we truly ‘see’ and accept ourselves, warts and all, perhaps for the first time, a deep compassion opens up for others who also have strengths and imperfections. We fall in love with people and our Creator, and as we do so, we reach out to them, and find that they, in turn, reach out to us. Could Aristotle have been right in suggesting that we first must love ourselves before we can love others? I’ll leave you to make up your own mind about that!
Well that’s all for now. I hope you enjoyed my ramblings through the ‘red month’ of February.
Wishing you peace and love until we connect again.
Colin
