by Susan Valek
How many millions of words have been written on the subject of love? And how many of them have meant anything to anyone? As Valentine’s Day approaches, I want to tell you about a book that not only tells what love is, but also makes concrete suggestions for putting more love into anyone’s life.
Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving, published in 1956 and still in print, shows a profound understanding of love. Fromm begins, "Is love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort." He points out that people generally want to know how to make themselves more lovable, not how to increase their capacity to give love; what they want is not to love, but to be loved.
Even if we do want to love, Fromm continues, we often mistakenly decide that the problem is to find an object for our love, not to improve our ability to love.
Most of the book is devoted to the theory of love, and I should mention here that this means not only erotic love, but also brotherly love, motherly love, self-love, and love of God — love in all its forms. Love, says Fromm, is the answer to the problem of human existence.
What particularly fascinated me, however, is the final chapter, "The Practice of Love." If love is an art (and Fromm maintains that it is), then we can learn to love as we would learn any art.
Fromm lists several requirements for learning an art: discipline, concentration, patience, and a supreme concern with mastering the art.
Discipline means working on mastering the art not just when we feel like it, but on a regular basis, and with attention to all related activities. In learning to love, for instance, a related activity is learning to listen, really listen, to what another person is saying.
Concentration is the ability to single-mindedly focus on one task, and one task only, at a time, not letting oneself be distracted by other things (particularly one’s own thoughts). When we listen with concentration, for instance, we are not thinking about what we will say next. We just listen. "If one is concentrated, it matters little what one is doing; the important, as well as the unimportant, things assume a new dimension of reality, because they have one’s full attention."
Patience is the ability to wait, to expect good results — later. In this culture we want it now. "Modern man thinks he loses something — time — when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains — except kill it," Fromm says.
About a supreme concern with the mastery of an art, Fromm tells us, "If the art is not something of supreme importance, the apprentice will never learn it. He will remain, at best, a good dilettante, but will never become a master."
Fromm also gives a few pointers on acquiring discipline and concentration (no easy task). He discusses the importance of an objective viewpoint and tells why an ideal of fairness in dealing with one’s neighbors is not enough.
Not bad for a 118-page book!