What are the ways you can love a person?

p.s. ideas for a word for love when you are caring for someone who has dementia, so it's no longer a two-way kind of love?

Compassion is a good word.

Look up the taoist principle of the uncarved block of wood - beauty of the unformed.

My mind also goes to holding onto single moments even when the beauty of a moment isn't shared by the memory of it by the other that gave it.

The Greek work storge (affection) is a fourth kind of love. C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves includes eros, philia, agape, and storge. The wikipedia page for "Greek words for love" includes those four plus thelema, desire, as in "the desire to do something, to be occupied, to be in prominence." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love

how about "caritas"--it's a medieval, latin concept of selfless, non-desiring love. fits your dementia scenario.

Girlfriday, this is a beautiful question. French gives phrases--bonne vivant or joie de vivre--for love of life. Is there a reflection of this feeling in English? How about love of one's fellow man? I thought of 'sacrifice' when you mentioned dementia.

I think we need to expand the English vocabulary on love. What about a word for the affection you feel toward people you have never met, and know only via online exchanges? Or the love of possibility that a new encounter offers?

e-ffection? Joie de vivre is a good expression but bon vivant is an idiom usually meaning someone who lives high off the hog - eating and drinking well and having an opulent life style - not always a compliment. I feel e-ffection for many of you, par exemple.

Carolyn Heilbrun (aka the mystery writer Amanda Cross) wrote in 1997 a wonderful book of essays called THE LAST GIFT OF TIME: Life Beyond Sixty. She called us email buddies "unmet friends."

Hi Gailcalled, I really like e-ffection! Now I am curious to know how many people over 60 are online. I had in my mind that it is not typically the case for that generation to communicate via email.

Hi, Helena: In spite of huge resistance, I was bullied into learning w. an eMac in 1998 by my daughter. She ordered lots of expensive, mysterious things by phone while she was here for the holidays,and then went back to Providence. A week after Xmas, these huge boxes and my MC bill arrived. I had to hire a teen-ager to install and give me lessons for a year, but it turned out to be fun. And one day, I mysteriously caught on.

The Mac has always been more user-friendly than the PCs, of course. And then, about 130 members (smart women) of my college class started a listserv; so we were ahead of the curve (then, at least). Now there are the gadgets....but I really haven't much interest. I keep a little cell phone for the days when I slip off an icy road into the ditch, and that's it. I will have to deep-six my poor old CRT TVs in two years, I understand, and cable hasn't arrived here.

All my cousins, in their 60s, are online - some more slap-dash than others - and some of the generation older than I (yes, it is possible) use webtv. Ben's grandpa Joe, for example. My mother's BF gave lessons until he died a few years ago at 94. It's attitude, baby.

theirr personality