Brain Food #565
Room for love
Thoughts of the day
Beyond the romantic notion of love, or the love we may feel for another person, even the platonic kind, it may be hard to define exactly what love is.
To Erich Fromm, German thinker and author of The Art of Loving, love is, as the title gives away, an art. Like art, the act of love requires knowledge and effort, and even though the potential may be there, it takes years of practice and of connecting first of all with oneself before seeking a connection with others. It is first about learning to be alone before seeking to give love - without the expectation to receive it - to someone else.
Fromm also describes how we self-sabotage, caught up in the frenetic pace of modern life:
“Modern man has transformed himself into a commodity; he experiences his life energy as an investment with which he should make the highest profit, considering his position and the situation on the personality market. He is alienated from himself, from his fellow men and from nature. His main aim is profitable exchange of his skills, knowledge, and of himself, his "personality package" with others who are equally intent on a fair and profitable exchange. Life has no goal except the one to move, no principle except the one of fair exchange, no satisfaction except the one to consume…”
The secret? Patience: “What could the grown-up person achieve if he had the child’s patience and its concentration in the pursuits which are important to him.”
Patience makes room - temporal and mental - for love, to love not just another, but also oneself.
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