Love, Loving, love, and why the distinction matters
For a long time I thought to be acting out of love whenever I pushed my own wants and needs aside to do something for someone else. That behaviour was a direct result of my overdeveloped ability to please (or: fawn) in response to danger, at the cost of my ability to flee, fight, or freeze. Inevitably, since I can only disregard my own needs for so long, that love turned into hate, and usually either toward myself or the person I proclaimed to love.
Photo by Ditto Bowo on Unsplash
If by Love we mean a state of being where we are tolerant, respectful, generous, and curious, and from where we sincerely enjoy seeing others and ourselves develop, grow, and mature, then Loving points to the possibility of training those qualities and bringing them into practice. We can regard this as the divine Love that knows no opposite. It exists in different types and can be distinguished from the love that is the opposite of hate, which often arises out of anxiety or greed and a desire to possess.
More often than not, however, many of us proclaim to be acting out of Love, while in fact the love that arises out of anxiety or greed turns out to be the main motivator. For instance, it’s considered common sense to equate unselfishness with Love. Yet, complete unselfishness stemming from either ignorance of one’s own physical and mental needs or a sense of pride for never wanting anything for themselves, often results in tiredness, depression, troubled relationships, or possible life threatening diseases.[1] That is because they are not acting out of Love, but out of anxiety that something indescribably bad will happen to them if they were to behave differently, and, God forbid, were to actually do something for themselves.
Since this is but one of the countless exemplary problems of such ignorance (many of which I can attest to), both on the micro and macro levels, understanding the different forms of Love and how they can be distinguished from the anxiety and greed based love, is not merely academically interesting, but an utter necessity if we wish to create a peaceful society inhabited by jolly people.
Let us therefore use psychoanalyst Erich Fromm’s book The Art Of Loving as a guide to identify five different types of Love, how they can be practiced as Loving, and how to distinguish them from the anxiety/greed based love. Simultaneously we will find out why self-knowledge is indispensable if we wish to know what it means to Love, and how sincerely Loving changes our general state of being from anxious and closed to open and joyful.
Image statue: mimoulamiou. Composition: author.
1: Brotherly Love is Love for our fellow human beings and by extension for anything there is, the universe at large. This type of Love characterizes itself by a genuine wish for health, meaning and belonging for everyone and everything, from the amoeba and mosquito to tigers, mountains, planets, and people. That is, ALL people; this type of Love is inclusive in the sense that we can sincerely wish health, prosperity and meaning/belonging for every being, not just the ones we happen to know and like.
People who live out this type of Love act like heaven, earth, water, and the sun; for heaven impartially embraces all beings, earth impartially supports all beings, water nourishes all things without intending to, and the sun doesn’t discriminate on whom it shines.
However, cultivation of this type of Love proves difficult when we have little or no self-knowledge. Without self-knowledge we tend to ignore our own personal wants and needs, which we often refer to as our shadow or dark side because we have come to believe that those wants/needs are, in some way or other, sinful. The result thereof is that we harshly condemn anyone acting out those particular needs, be them others or ourselves, which obviously shows an inability to Love all beings indiscriminately. Therefore, recognition, acknowledgement, and acceptance of our own shadow side is required in order to cultivate genuine brotherly Love.
2: Motherly love is love for the helpless, and is by its nature also inclusive in that we can feel Love for any being in need. A new-born baby is completely helpless without its mother (or another caregiver). Left to its own devices, a human baby has neither the skills, nor the knowledge or physique to survive on its own. Therefore, for the first part of its life, it needs the help of anOTHER to develop and grow.
Just like babies there are many adults in helpless situations, for example those being displaced by wars or natural disasters, and it’s fairly easy for most of us to offer help in these kinds of circumstances. Yet, cultivation of motherly Love also proves difficult without adequate self-knowledge. Because then we are liable to ‘blame’ certain misfortunes on people’s ‘own fault’, and then they don’t deserve any kind of sympathy. A big population with little or no sympathy consists of the homeless for instance. We don’t know why they turned to the streets, but their appearance generally evokes feelings of disgust and anxiety. The same goes for alcohol or drug addicts and mental patients.
Especially in highly developed, technological, and individualized societies, there is a big awareness (albeit mostly unconscious) that these misfortunes can happen to each and every one of us, and that has a tendency to give us the heebie jeebies. As long as we have not reconciled with our own shadow side, those heebie jeebies will keep us from cultivating an all-inclusive Love for whom ever is in need of help.
Homeless people and addicts often evoke fear and disgust, and mostly receive little love and compassion. Image: JohnOndreasz
3: Contrary to the above types of Love, erotic Love is by its very nature exclusive because, beside its obvious practical problems, it refers to the craving for complete fusion and union with one other person. However, according to Fromm, it might also be the most deceptive type of Love, because without brotherly Love already being manifest in both individuals, what they call ‘love’ is either based on greed, possessiveness, or anxiety for loneliness. Therefore, if “I love you” doesn’t simultaneously mean: “I love in you all of humanity, all that is alive. I love in you also myself,” then whatever it is that we call ‘love’ is not actually Love, but something else that we confuse for Love.
First there is the confusion of erotic Love with the explosive experience of falling in love: the sudden collapse of the barriers that existed until then between two strangers. After a while, however, the intimate person becomes as known as (or better: as little known as) ourselves, so that there are no barriers anymore to overcome. Intimacy is then primarily established through sexual contact, because they experience separateness from the other person primarily as physical separateness. Therefore, physical union means overcoming (the idea of) separateness. Anxiety for (the idea of) separateness is then the basis for staying in a relationship, which is never a solid foundation. If we, on the other hand, could experience the continuous change in ourselves, the other person would never become so familiar – because the miracle of overcoming the barriers might occur every day anew. In other words: if we know and understand that every moment we are born again,[2] we never cease to surprise ourselves, and hence another will never cease to surprise us either.[3]
A second interesting way where erotic Love is confused for something else can be found in couples who pretend to have Love only for each other. In such cases they are finding mutual grounds, topics of interest (or hate), or anything else which creates the idea of fusion with another under the assumption of ‘us against the world’. Here, again, anxiety for separateness is usually the basis for conduct, for many of us would rather be in an unsatisfying or harmful relationship than no relationship at all. In most cases such relationships are not sustainable, or at the least will not contribute much to create a tolerant and caring environment – either for themselves, or for others.
Finally, let’s look at sexual desire for a moment. It is true that sexual desire aims at fusion, but it can be stimulated by the anxiety for aloneness, vanity, the desire to conquer or be conquered, or the wish to hurt or even destroy, as much as it can be stimulated by Love. However, when it is stimulated by Love, it is blended with a feeling of deep tenderness; while greediness or the need for conquering are completely lacking.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
4: The Love for self is often confused with selfishness, but in the West these terms are interchangeably used. Calvin calls self-Love ‘a pest’, and Freud saw narcissism in it. From that perspective, Love and self-Love are mutually exclusive, and the more we have of one, the less we have of the other. Moreover, if Love for another is virtuous, then self-Love automatically becomes a vice.
Yet, as we have seen above, the inability to know when we need to act on our own wants and needs, inevitably leads to acting out of anything but Love. Again we see that a thorough knowledge of ourselves lies at the basis of our ability to Love, in this case ourselves. Self-Love is therefore inseparably connected with Loving every other being. In fact, it’s the same thing.
Selfishness, by contrast, consists of exclusively being interested in oneself. A selfish person wants everything for himself, finds no joy in giving, and judges everyone and everything merely from its usefulness to him. Selfishness makes a person unable to Love, either others or himself, which is of course beautifully described in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. There, the inability to Love his real self makes Scrooge hate himself, and his selfishness is merely an unsuccessful attempt to cover up and compensate his inability to Love. Naturally such a person will in time begin to resent life itself, and when a group of discontented people grows beyond a certain threshold, we should not be surprised that war is an outcome.
So, as the old Greek adage says: know thyself. Moreover, if you ever meet a selfish person, be kind to them, for they are in enough trouble as it is. Buy them a coffee, sit down and have a talk. Ask, without judgment, how he or she is doing. Find out their definition of the good life, and ask about their life energy and bucket list for instance. For it is well known that anger and anxiety can only be cured by Love.
Truly loving others is only possible when we truly love ourselves. Image: geralt
5: Before moving onto the Love of God, I’d like to emphasize that Fromm inquires and analyses much deeper in his book than is to be read in the above paragraphs, which are primarily aimed at evoking thought and understanding about the concept of Love, and how that can enrich our lives. If, however, you find your curiosity ignited about the psychology of Love, all it’s pseudo-forms, and much more, I strongly recommend reading Fromm’s The Art Of Loving.
In briefly discussing the Love of God, I’m now deviating a little from Fromm’s writings. For Love of God might be easier cultivated if we turn to a concept of the divine which is to be found in the Bhadārayaka Upanishad,[4] and gives an apt description of my personal metaphysics – which consists of the religious belief that there is something which rests in all beings, which all beings cannot (intellectually) know, which is other than all beings, of which all beings are the body, and which controls all beings from within.[5]
I wish to call this invisible force Nature, which in human beings can be found in our subconscious, as contrary to Culture, which can be linked to our awake consciousness. For if we get to know ourselves well enough to trust our own, individual human nature in providing what we need and what is best for us, then we can begin to use our conscious thinking faculty for what it’s actually made for, namely to recognize the signs, situations, and chances that Nature creates for us to develop and grow.
In that way we are allowed to find out, for instance, what health means for ourselves; how joy feels in our particular body and mind, and how we can stimulate others to find that out for themselves. For there is after all only one person in the whole world who can figure out what you need, and that is you. But we need to put Nature in the driver’s seat with Culture as it’s faithful servant, for the other way around only leads to ignorance, hate, anxiety, and greed.
In that sense, studying and learning about Love is in essence the same as studying and learning about ourselves. And since studying and learning about ourselves usually provides deep insights into our own shadow side, automatically our sense for, and feeling of, Love increases. And with that, a deep sense of belonging, meaning, compassion, peace, and definitely jolliness.
Love for God means that everyone may find and cultivate their own talents and abilities. Image: minhthai0105
To sum up: if we wish to Love and be Loved, we can study Love, learn about Love, find out what Love means for us, and investigate how we can live Love and be Love. As with any skill, the more time and attention we put into it, the more we find out about ourselves, and the bigger our capacity to Love becomes.
With love and jolly greetings,
Erik
Notes & References:
[1] ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) was named after Lou Gehrig (Lou Gehrig’s disease) because he was the first known case which established that chronic stress emerging from extreme unselfishness set up the conditions for ALS to develop and thrive. For Lou’s story and how daily stress can lead up to ALS, click here.
[2] Which is true in the most literal sense, because parts of our body die every day and are then renewed. The same can be said for our mind, which is remodelled and reshaped every day with the accumulation of new information from inside and outside of our body.
[3] This paragraph is paraphrased from Erich Fromm: The Art of Loving, chapter III – Erotic Love.
[4] Valerie Roebuck, The Upanishads (Chapter 7).
[5] The divine that is described in this view is called Tao in China, Brahman or Atman (Self) in India, God in Christianity, Allah in Islam, Yahweh in Judaism, The Void in Buddhism. It points to the One that can’t be named, the life energy out of which all material and spiritual phenomena arise, and into which they again dissolve.
Share your way!
Dear reader, even though the process of finding of our own way in life can be a tough and difficult road to travel, everyone who gathers the courage to walk it shares the same view: they wouldn’t have it any other way. Have you broken free from conventional life to find your own way? Do you have a knack for writing and would you like to share your story via this website? Feel free to leave a comment or contact us via the contact form. We’d love to make our community grow!