18 May

The Art Of Loving

by Jon Katz
The Art Of Loving: Kelly At the Bog

Erich Fromm was a famous psychoanalyst and social philosopher. He has been a great inspiration and guide to me in my life. One of my favorite of his books is called The Art Of Loving, I credit it greatly for helping me understand how to love Maria, and hopefully, encourage her to love me back.

His ideas about loving are not what you have been seeing in the movies and on TV, he takes love seriously and challenges people to think deeply about it, something few of  us have been taught how to do.

Fromm will be a disappointing experience for lazy people, or for people who think love is simply a mysterious emotion, or magical happening, some ethereal chemistry that we are powerless to really understand or control. For Fromm, love is not a sentiment which can be easily indulged in by anyone, regardless of their level of maturity or thoughtfulness or willingness to work at it.

Everyone wants love and need it, but if you  look around, you will find very few people who really  achieve it.

Fromm believed that love is bound to fail unless people try in the most active way to understand themselves, face the truth about their inner selves,  and develop and embrace their total personality.

He believed that loving a single person is a holistic and all-encompassing process, that the joy and satisfaction of individual love cannot be achieved or maintained without the capacity to love one’s neighbor and without true humility, courage, faith, and discipline.

Love is about giving and taking, compromising and adjusting, it is a ballet, that it the art of it.

In a culture in which qualities like humility are increasingly rare – just watch the news – the great achievement of the capacity to love is rare. All we have to do is ask ourselves how many truly loving people we have known in our lives.

Love, preached Fromm, is an art.

Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, or of one’s capacity to love. For them, the problem is how to be loved, how to be loveable –  looks, charm, money, makeup. Men were taught to believe that love is connected to power.

Women were taught to be attractive, helpful, modest or submissive.

Few of us were ever taught to be ourselves, and to be loved for that.

I lived a loveless life and could not understand or accept love until I decided  that what I needed to do was to grow up, face the truth about myself, look inward.

Love, I came to learn, was not about how I looked, or how much money I had, how much power I had or security I could offer. It was about none of the things I had been taught to believe.

Love was not about dominating or taking care of someone else,  about sex connection, about passion and euphoria, it was about learning to find perspective, be humble, work to heal myself, to listen and to take care of me. If I was to find love, I had to love and accept myself.

Maturity was the right word for what I needed, the farther away I got from the adolescent model of love and passion, the closer I came to finding and understanding it.

The process of loving never ends, it is never done.  It requires continuous thought, care, experimentation, self-examination. Every morning, I ask myself what can I do to make Maria’s love better, more meaningful, more comfortable. She asks the same thing about me.

When we argue, disagree, get irritated, we both understand that this is an opportunity to grow with one another, to heal our wounds and build reservoirs of trust. We need them, all the time.

But Fromm is right, I believe. Love is an art.

Falling in love depends in some way on our coming within reach of our own possibilities for empathy and exchange.

I accepted the idea that love is an art, just like writing,  and the first steps I took to find it were to become aware of that. Love is an art, just as living well is an art, playing the violin.

if I wanted to learn how to love I had to follow the same  steps I took in learning how to write, or take photographs, or any other art like music,  painting, carpentry, or medicine.

The process of learning any art is arduous and challenging. People approach me all the time saying they want to write a novel about their fascinating lives, few are ever willing to do the hard work to get a novel published.

Real love, I think, is far from the romantic idea our culture offers us of instant romance, falling in love, being swept away and into the stars. We put one another on pedestals and they must one day fall off.

As the divorce rates indicate, that idea of romance is shallow and often short-lived.

There are two steps to art, according to the masters: one is the mastery of theory, the other the mastery of the practice.

Maria was not looking for a handsome or charming or rich man, she was seeking the special love of being known, of being understood and supported. She didn’t care what i looked like, or that the sight of me made her heart flutter out of her chest.

I understood quickly that for love to happen, I had to do some hard work on myself. I did have to be more humble, completely honest, to listen with concentration, and I had to be mature and thoughtful, not repulsive, manipulative or calculating.

Maria would either love me for the person I was, or not love me for the same reason, I had  to learn the theory and practice of love. I had to do the work.

And so I worked to be authentic and true, I didn’t want another me to emerge later, that would be the end of our love.

There was something else as well. As with writing or music or any true art, the mastery of the art must be foremost, the ultimate concern. There must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. This is true for music or fiber art or medicine.

Despite the universal craving for love, I  have seen that almost everything else in our world is considered to be more important – success, prestige, money, power. Almost all of our energy and education and focus is about how to achieve those things.

I remember deciding to give up on those the things we are manipulated into believing, to let go of outward notions of security and responsibility. I decided something that very few people I know decide – love was everything, love was what I wanted, just like writing was everything, all that I wanted. It wasn’t something I craved in the background, it was what I wanted, period.

And this lesson turned out to be the most precious and true, because I found love, and my love was returned, and suddenly, I had everything that I wanted and needed, and the rest of my life fell into place. I am not especially successful in the world, I have little money and no power and even less security.

Yet I have never been happier or more fulfilled. So it was true for me. Love was what was the most important thing to me, and I now have everything I need or ever wanted.

Love is an art, I will always take it seriously.

1 Comments

  1. Thank you for another great article. Excellent insight & so glad you’ve had the opportunity and fortitude to experience true love in your lifetime.

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