The meaning of love figures in many
famous quotations. "Love is all there is" sayeth
the Beatles. "God is love," sayeth the apostle
John. "Love Thy God with all Thy Heart and your
neighbor as yourself," sayeth the Great Commandment.
Does that commandment mean, for example, being emotionally
available to God and to one another?
I suspect people can more easily detect
the presence or absence of emotional availability than they
can define what it is. On the other hand, psychics handling
900 lines have said that one of the most frequently asked
questions is, "Does he love me?" Apparently it is
not that easy to determine whether or not there is love in
the air.
There is certainly some kind of difference
between being able to define something in words, being able
to detect its presence or absence, or being able to practice
or manifest it. How do you love God with all your heart? How
do you love your neighbor as yourself? We seem to have a lot
of trouble loving ourselves, for example, judging by all the
effort we have to put into raising our self-esteem.
Love has been the subject of theologians'
debate, philosophers' conjecture, as well as the theme of
most songs and many movies. Psychologists try to help out by
breaking love down into bite-size pieces.
How many people remember the five
components of love spelled out by Erich Fromm in his Art
of Loving? Sam Keen has expanded this number to sixteen
in his new book, To Love and Be Loved (Bantam). He
identifies these elements as attention, desire, knowledge,
sensuality, empathy, compassion, enjoyment, care,
storytelling, repenting, self-love, commitment, co-creation,
adoration, sexuality, and enchantment. At least two of
Fromm's five appear here.
Keen writes, "In the depths of our
being, in body, mind and spirit, we know intuitively that we
are created to love and be loved, and that fulfilling this
imperative, responding to this vocation, is the central
meaning of our life." Keen sees the sixteen elements of
love as talents and skills we need to pursue the love
vocation. They take a lifetime to develop. Talking from his
own experience, he tells us what he has learned about love
and loving from lovers, friends, children, and life itself.
It's easier to wish for love than to
cultivate it. Something this important is not going to be
easy. Among of the puzzles that Keen wrestles with is the
problem of loving your neighbor as yourself if you don't
love yourself so well. Do we work on loving ourselves until
we've perfected that task, and then turn to our neighbor? Or
maybe we practice on our neighbor and hope our neighbor will
practice on us and teach us how to do something we can't do
for ourselves. Of course, most of us adopt a mixed strategy.
There is no simple and straight path to learning the art of
loving.
Keen appreciates the dark side of love and
finds his favorite classrooms in the shadows. A good example
is when you are having trouble loving someone who is causing
you pain. The solution--and that is a good word, because it
means the medium in which the problem dissolves--has to be
worked out, or created, through a process. We can meditate
on the situation, examine our own motivations and patterns,
and strive for an attitude adjustment. But often what is
required is the more risky path of communication.
Keen observes that love has a way of
loosening the tongue. The heart wishes to speak, whether
happy or sad, and it's good for the heart to confide, that
is for sure, even if it's hard on it. Talking about our
feelings with the person involved raises our blood pressure
while we talk, but later there is a clear health benefit of
getting things "off our chest."
Communication is an important, and often
underrated companion of love. Keen's book itself is his own
personal communication about what he has learned, and hopes
still to learn, about love. Sometimes the path down which
love's imperative pushes us also confronts us with obstacles
that only communication can dissolve. Situations arise for
which there are no clear ways to resolve the dilemma. Only
in open-hearted communication can the parties involved
muddle through to create their own special adaptation.
For love to have its say, sincere
communication has two requirements: confiding in an open,
even if even confused and muddled, flow of expressed
feelings and listening with a willingness to experience a
different point of view. It is the interpersonal equivalent
of meditation. Here love clearly appears in the form of
emotional availability. The open-hearted communication
between people helps create a new working understanding of
the meaning of love and its dictates.
