Very different from eros is philia, a serene love much more akin to friendship, with its reciprocal kindnesses. You love each other for the happy experiences and pleasures you share.
Eros is not tranquil - it gives us spikes of happiness rather than a constant feeling of wellbeing. It's the love we feel at the beginning of a love affair and corresponds to the expression 'falling in love' since it is as involuntary an impulse as a physical fall.
I didn't intend 'Hector' to be a self-help book when I first started writing. I wrote it as a little tale about a psychiatrist, like me, who sets off around the world in order to discover the vital ingredients for happiness.
Finding love is a fixation now, and that's because although romantic love can sometimes cause a lot of suffering, it can also give people peaks of happiness that come very close to our ideal of 'the happy state.'
