I'm Shira Erlichman, and this is The Slowdown.

In the depths of a ravenous depression, I received a hand-knit scarf in the mail.

It was composed of at least ten blues, Navy's Cerulean's teals.

A little note was included from a faraway friend, blues for all your blues.

Holding those blues, I felt Philia, a love premised on intimate authentic friendship.

Our culture is obsessed with eros, the romantic passion it lustful love, the stuff of rom-coms.

But the ancient Greeks offered us six other distinct words describing different kinds of love.

Philia can be applied to a romantic partner or equally to a platonic best friend.

Which leads me, of course, to our great modern writer of love, Toni Morrison.

In beloved she writes, she is a friend of my mind.

She gather me man, the pieces I am, she gather them, and give them back to me in all the right order.

Philia is a befriending love, one that rescues a scattered self and returns it in a dignifying constellation.

That same month as the scarf in the mail, my friend Allegra would often drop by my home with a single mochi.

Her hand extended through the crack of my front door.

She'd wave the tiny green treat and shout here before disappearing into the night.

On another evening, she showed me how to build a huge paper snowflake.

She was patient with my slow brain, my slow hands.

Together, we hung it over my bed, where it would continue to spin in circles long after my depression had lifted.

I want more words for love because I love my friends in a real way,

a way that deserves its own Philia comedy or Philcom.

I've known my friend, Alessandra, since I was six, that's 32 years of Philia.

We've had a thousand sleepovers.

...