NAME: ISRAEL, SHEILMAE M.

DATE: MARCH 4, 2023

SCHEDULE: SSU/10:30-12:00 ART OF LOVING

The foundation of everything in this world is love. But the question is, what is love? Is

love an art? Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant sensation? The

majority of people believe that love is “a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a

matter of chance, something one ‘falls into’ if one is lucky". We can learn to love. This is

the hopeful message that Erich Fromm gave in his book “The Art of Loving”. According to

Erich Fromm, love is an art which refers to the love as an art, a feeling that we all have the

potential to experience, but that requires care to be maintained. In his quote, “The first

step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn

how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any

other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering”, he

concluded that a love should be maintained. “People think that to love is simple, but that

to find the right object to love – or to be loved by – is difficult.” ‘Are you the right one

for me?’ or, ‘Will I find someone better, more compatible, more attractive to be with?’ are

questions that focus on the other as an object. It makes partners replaceable and

relationships an investment that may have good or poor returns.

Remember that sharing your feelings requires you to be connected with them,

understand them, and take care of them, in such a way that you don’t end up looking for

external ways to fulfill the needs that you don’t know how to fulfill yourself.

From this reflection, I can gather how important it is for two people to relate to each

other from their own essence. Only by having a deep knowledge of each other will the

couple be able to build a solid foundation from which love can evolve. Remember that it’s

a mistake to love just to run away from yourself, because then it won’t be possible for a

healthy and reciprocal encounter to develop.

When you use love to escape your own discomfort, you’re doomed to destroy it. If

you use this feeling as a refuge to hide from things you can’t handle in your life, you’re

just running away from yourself. I'm the end, though loving is difficult to learn and
practice, it is most worthwhile and more important than money, fame or power. The

mystery of existence reveals itself—if it ever does—through things like relating to nature

and productive work but, most of all, through our relationships with other people. Thus,

to experience the depths of life, we should cultivate the art of loving.