the art of loving

My New Best Friend (also known as the woman who is professionally trained and paid to listen and sort through my emotional junk every Wednesday evening) has assigned me some homework in the form of literature. It's my favorite type: part head, part heart. She's limiting me to one chapter a week (the worst kind of torture), but so far, my response to this book is: yes. My New Best Friend assigned it for a reason and I intend to get as much out of it as is physically possible for me in this time. I intend to learn, to grow and to share. Maybe you can glean some wisdom, too.

From The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm:

"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.

What are the necessary steps in learning any art?

The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about various diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one-my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art. But aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art--the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. This holds true for music, for medicine, for carpentry--and for love. And maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power--almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving."