How to understand platonic love?

You may have heard the term platonic love, before. Here in this article, I will help you to understand and feel platonic love, not for the first time! because once you read the article you would realize you have known it before.

Maybe you are hearing "Platonic love" for the first time. Hence, following is a simple definition given by Wikipedia.

Definition of platonic love

"Platonic love is a type of love in which sexual desire or romantic features are nonexistent or have been suppressed, sublimated, or purgated(purified), but it means more than simple friendship."

Does it mean a love where sexual desire is not there? We know that kind of love, don't we?

A mother's love for her children.

A fathers love for his children.

A child's love for his/her parents

Siblings love for each other.

A priest loving his followers.

Frends love each other.

Are all of the above can be considered as platonic love? (platonic simply means what Plato interpreted) How can we understand platonic love? I can show you an easy method to understand what it means something to be platonic.

To understand platonic love, consider following examples.

Imagine a circle, which is 100% smooth. You can imagine it right?

Have you ever seen such a complete circle in your life? It is obvious we can never draw a one. Yet we can imagine. We will never find it in real life, we might never able to produce a complete circle. Yet it can exist in our minds. Similarly, you can imagine a square, a straight line or a triangle. Yet there are not 100% straight line a square or triangle in real world.

Imagine a beautiful butterfly, or a flower. However, that beauty is 100%. There is no flaw, there is no more beauty than that. It is at its best. A magical butterfly, a magical flower. As eyes can see and mind can imagine.

Now imagine a world with justice. That everyone is equally served, even animals even plants. Can you imagine such a world? Maybe you can, but such a world does not exist. Yet we can imagine. You can similarly imagine a world with peace, beauty, even Love!

Imagine a love which is so pure, in its basic form. Without any greed. Like "God's love". We can imagine, not only imagination, but we may also try to achieve it thorough our bodily acts. Yet we will never reach that Platonic love. Only we can reach only so far.

So platonic love is not,

A mother loves her children.

A fathers love for his children.

A child's love for his/her parents

Siblings love each other.

A priest's love for his followers.

Frends love.

Such platonic love is imaginary, we would not know it exist or not out of our imagination. Yet Plato tried to achieve, at least he believed he would reach such virtuous form after his death.

Now answer the question,

Have you imagined platonic love before? Maybe you have without coining the term.

Thank you for reading, How to understand platonic love.

You may also like to read, Nature is really beautiful, or is it?