“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” - Carl Sagan, Contact
“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow human beings, their love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty.” - Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
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I’ll never forget the moment my dad told me he and mom were breaking up. It was a summer evening in 2004, and Dad and I were having dinner at a local haunt we frequented often in those days. Over shrimp cocktail and Pizza King pizza, dad dropped the bombshell. “Your mom and I are getting divorced,” he said, “and I want to ask if you’d like to come with me.” The prospect seemed positive, as my life in Shelbyville was never what I wanted— the constant teasing at school, the tumultuous home life, and the lack of connection with others. But what made my decision easy was what my dad said next, which was that we’d move in with Grandma. That was all I needed to hear. At that moment, I knew that moving away from everything I’d known was worth it, because I’d have my Grandma there for me.
That September, Dad and I packed up our things in a U-Haul and moved nearly two hours north to the outskirts of Peru. It was a bit of a shock at first, as the walkable and urban setting I had lived in was replaced with one state highway road surrounded by miles and miles of cornfields. Nevertheless, the look on my Grandma’s face as she welcomed us into her home, now our home, will live forever in my mind. She took us in with open arms, with no ounce of hesitation or second thoughts. She did what she had always done— provide safety, care, and love to all she knew. These transformations in our lives were compounded by the fact that we wouldn’t be doing them alone. We always had my Grandma there for us. And she never faltered in her task.
My Grandmother, Martha Ruth Clark, was born on January 23, 1935. A child of the Great Depression and the Second World War, she has always valued thrift, kindness, and community. Growing up, watching her wash aluminum foil or write on the back of post-it notes always seemed odd, but to her it was a reaffirmation of valuing the things you have and using up what you’ve already accrued. A graduate of Peru High School, she married my Grandfather, Robert, in 1954— on her 19th birthday. The couple had one child, my dad, Craig, in 1960. While she worked in the early years of their marriage, she became a homemaker once my father was born. My grandparents were married for 25 years before he died of cancer in 1979. My first name is Robert, in honor of him, and I often think what it would’ve been like to meet him.
Now a widow, my Grandma went back to work, this time for the Maconaquah School Corporation, a position she would hold for 27 years. My parents married, had my sister and I, and Grandma became a constant in our lives. Years later, she recalled that the first time she held me as an infant, she knew we had a special bond. Apparently, I fell gently asleep in her arms, knowing that the person who held me would keep me safe. As a young child, Christmas Eve was always a special time. Grandma would come in the evening with her car filled with goodies for everyone. She’d take pictures and help my parents with whatever they needed. Those are some of my most precious memories.
Once Dad and I moved in with Grandma, our bond grew even stronger. She was a surrogate mom for me, providing a safe, stable, and loving home. During every phase I had, from spiky-haired punk rocker to folksy troubadour, she supported me. She’d help glue patches of my favorite bands on my jackets and drove me to nearly all my band practices. Her garage served as a recording studio for my friends and I to record our latest covers of Green Day songs or tunes we penned ourselves. And she always had a great lunch ready for us when we took a break. I look back so fondly on those years, when everything seemed right for the first time in my life. It wouldn’t have happened without her opening her life to us.
There are two fundamental lessons that she imparted to me, ones that have guided my life thus far; I call them the imperatives of tact and love. First, let’s discuss tact. This was a word I heard often from my Grandma growing up. Whenever I’d say something mean about someone else or lose my temper, she’d say to me, “Justin, you’ve got to be tactful!” I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I looked up the word. It means “adroitness and sensitivity in dealing with others or with difficult issues.” In essence, it means to be kind and patient with others who may be bothering you. Tact became something I strove for in all my interactions with others; to this day, I think my commitment to tact is why I generally avoid conflict. If we could all strive to be kind, patient, and empathetic with others, the world would be a much better place.
The second, and ultimately more important lesson was the imperative of love. Before living with Grandma, love always felt like something said but not done. My parents loved my sister and I, don’t get me wrong, but their actions often didn’t reflect the love they said they had for us. It wasn’t until my Grandma took Dad and I in that I truly understood love. She showed her love just as much, if not more, then she said it— through every meal, every hug, every reminder note, basically through all that she did. It was through my years with Grandma that learned that love is a verb, not a noun. Love is what we do for ourselves and for others, not merely the tender words we utter. In other words, love is predicated on action, and each action we take towards ourselves and others reaffirms the imperative of love.
Another person who thought that love was an action, and wrote eloquently about it, was the 20th century psychologist Erich Fromm. Born in 1900 in Frankfurt, Germany, Fromm grew up in an orthodox Jewish family who valued the community that their faith gave them. From early on, his experiences pushed him towards three guiding ideologies: humanism, socialism, and psychoanalysis. Ever the religious skeptic, Fromm rejected the orthodox Judaism of his family yet retained many of the moral and intellectual precepts derived from his study of the faith. This stemmed from his years of religious education with tutor Salman Baruch Rabinkow, whom Fromm said “influenced my life more than any other man, perhaps, and, although in different forms and concepts, his ideas have remained alive in me.” Thus, Fromm’s articulation of humanism always drew from the vast well of wisdom from religious teachings and myth.
The second guiding light was his socialism, which was deeply influenced by the reading of Karl Marx, especially the philosopher’s early writings. As Fromm wrote of Marx in 1974:
What drew me to him was primarily his philosophy and his vision of socialism, which expressed, in secular forms, the idea of human self-realization, of total humanization, the idea of a human being whose goal is vital self-expression and not the acquisition and accumulation of dead, material things.
Fromm dedicated himself to the cause of socialism for decades, challenging the capitalism of the United States while criticizing Soviet Communism. At the height of the Cold War, Fromm assisted in founding the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) in 1957. The name was inspired by his book, The Sane Society (1955), wherein he argued for a reenergized commitment to ethical conduct in the face of rapid technological change.
The third and final outlook that Fromm pulled from was psychoanalysis, the field of psychology founded by Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis, in a basic sense, is a study of the mind’s unconscious drives, desires, and dispositions— and how they relate to a person’s conscious life. Fromm’s interest in psychoanalysis began with his first wife, Frieda Reichmann, who introduced Fromm to Freud’s ideas. He later studied at the Psychoanalytic Institute in Berlin with prominent theorists of the field. What made his approach to psychoanalysis different from many of his contemporaries, including Freud himself, was his background in sociology, rather than medicine. This would shape Fromm’s own interpretation of psychoanalysis, which placed much more emphasis on the social, political, and economic forces which drove human behavior rather than on merely the mechanistic, biological drives of individuals. Despite these three strains of thought being a core component to his identity, Fromm eschewed individual labels, except for one. As biographer Peter Kramer wrote, “He took what he needed— and enthusiastically— from Judaism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and later, Taoism and Zen Buddhism, but Fromm was finally a humanist.”
While Fromm wrote eloquently on many facets of the human condition— violence, cooperation, transcendence— it was ultimately his writing on love that has left the broadest cultural impact. The Art of Loving, published in 1956, is his magnum opus on the subject, distilling insights from a lifetime of considering love in all its forms— romantic, familial, religious, and humanistic. Across all of these types of love, Fromm centers on one crucial element: love as an art that requires discipline, patience, and contemplation. This art breaks down into three essential components: theory, practice, and what he calls “ultimate concern.” Theory and practice are easily understood; much like painting or sculpture, one must learn from the great theorists and practitioners of love from the past to glean the requisite knowledge to carry out love in the present. Finally, the art of love is predicated on “ultimate concern,” a belief that “there is nothing else in the world more important than the art.” For me, the great theorist and practitioner of love in my life is my Grandma, who always shared her love through a dedication to all the people she cared for. She taught me that love is something not merely taken but given, and given continually through words of affirmation but also works of generosity and kindness. When my Grandmother loves someone, she dedicates her whole being to the act of loving them, placing the loved one in the category of “ultimate concern.”
Fromm then turns to the question of love’s importance to the human condition. Why do we desire love so much? It’s because we desire connection to others, since our innate separateness as individual human beings creates in us an overwhelming anxiety. As Fromm elaborates:
The experience of separateness arouses anxiety; it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety. Being separate means being cut off, without any capacity to use my human powers. Hence to be separate means to be helpless, unable to grasp the world—things and people—actively; it means that the world can invade me without my ability to react. Thus, separateness is the source of intense anxiety.
As our anxiety grows, our need for connection, any connection, tends to sublimate our better angels. We may join an insular group which promises love, but also obedience. This is where the desire for connection can go horribly wrong, as in the case of totalitarian movements of the 20th century or cults today.
As a counterpoint to these concerns, Fromm argues that the central form of connection is through “the achievement of interpersonal fusion, of fusion with another person, of love.” Interpersonal fusion, to Fromm, “is the most fundamental passion, it is the force which keeps the human race together, the clan, the family, society. The failure to achieve it means insanity or destruction—self-destruction or destruction of others. Without love, humanity could not exist for a day.” However, this fusion becomes destructive without a sense of one’s individuality, where love is something shared between equals and not a tug-of-war between two codependents. A “mature love,” writes Fromm, “is [a] union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality.” My Grandmother always inspired in me a sense of mature love, where the bond between two people brings out the best of their individual selves while simultaneously becoming greater than the sum of its parts. She always insisted that I be myself, that I embrace what makes me special, as it is the key to connection with others who will accept you for who you are.
In this vein, Fromm reiterates that “love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a ‘standing in,’ not a ‘falling for.’ In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.” This is the most important characteristic as it relates to my Grandma. Throughout my life, she has always cared for me, whether it was home-cooked meals, fresh laundry, or a shoulder to cry on. Her love centers on service, not mere words. She gave everything of herself to my father and I, who will be forever in her debt. Fromm adeptly understands this component of love, when he writes that “In the very act of giving, I experience my strength, my wealth, my power. This experience of heightened vitality and potency fills me with joy. I experience myself as overflowing, spending, alive, hence as joyous. Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.” Giving to those we love cements the power of that love, nourishes its effect to heal our anxious souls, and reaffirms our very sense of humanity.
So, how is the art of love made difficult in our society? To Fromm, it results from the conformism and alienation in modern society that turns us away from conscious, loving connection to self-absorbed consumption. These distortions of love’s true path push us towards forms of “pseudo-love” that are a pale comparison to the real deal. Fromm believes that there are two major forms of pseudo-love: “idolatrous love” and “sentimental love.” The former is when a person idolizes someone and fails to develop their own sense of individuality apart from the idolized, and the latter is a form of infatuated fantasy disconnected from one’s real experiences. In each case, these forms of love negate our sense of individuality, and subsequently, our capacity to connect with others and the broader society. Fromm’s solution to this problem is real communication between two people:
Love is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the center of their existence, hence if each one of them experiences himself from the center of his existence. Only in the ‘central experience’ is human reality, only here is aliveness, only here is the basis for love.
To get to this “center of existence” we must abandon cheap imitations of love, from parasocial relationships with celebrities to mindless idolatry via consumer goods. Only when we actively participate in the present moment with someone we hold dear will we know what love really is.
Finally, we turn to the practice of love, and here Fromm gives us clear, actionable advice. Fromm identifies four essential components to the art of love: discipline, concentration, patience, and supreme concern. Discipline in an art, whether it be painting, writing, or love, is indispensable. Without discipline, Fromm believed that “life becomes shattered, chaotic, and lacks concentration.” That takes us to the second component, concentration. “Concentration is rare in our culture,” Fromm writes, since “our culture leads to an unconcentrated and diffused mode of life” which engenders “difficulty in being alone with ourselves.” While Fromm was talking about the ways that folks distracted themselves in his time, from smoking to listening to the radio, this insight could easily apply to our smart phone, social media landscape today. Our discomfort in boredom leads us to constantly checking our phones for the latest email or social media notification. This incessant din of electronic noise can destroy our ability to concentrate on anything, from work responsibilities to conversations with a loved one.
It also makes us lack patience, which is the third component of Fromm’s art of love. “Anyone who ever tried to master an art,” Fromm describes, “knows that patience is necessary if you want to achieve anything. If one is after quick results, one never learns an art.” However, like with concentration and discipline, having patience in our hyperspeed world of instant gratification is exceedingly tough to inculcate. We must realize that the things that make life worth living take time, whether it be a portrait or a meaningful connection with someone else. We have to take the time to be patient— not only with others, but with ourselves. Learning to embrace the silence of time is a skill that pays immense dividends, and Fromm looks to Zen Buddhism for guidance on this point. Anticipating the “Mindfulness Revolution”, Fromm argues that by taking time in our day to meditate or reflect on the present moment, we can regain our ability to be disciplined, focused, and patient.
Most importantly, a person must have a supreme concern for the art one seeks to master, whether it be visual art or the art of love. It should be of utmost importance to you, with a precision-like attentiveness towards achieving mastery. For Fromm, this commitment separates “masters” of an art from “dilettantes,” or those who dabble but are never dedicated. Love thrives on dedication; if you give everything of yourself towards a meaningful connection with another person, that connection will enrich both of you. My Grandmother understood these lessons perfectly; she always gave her all to love me, my dad, and everyone in her life. She gave those she loved her deepest attention, concentration, and patience, no matter what the situation might be. Then, and only then, will you be a master of the art of love.
My Grandma turned 87 this year, and she is now in the twilight of her life. While she is bedridden and losing some of her faculties, she is as kind, sweet, and gracious as ever. No matter her circumstances, she always expresses concern and care for me when I visit. My life has been made immeasurably better by her guidance, generosity, and ultimately, her love. She understands love better than anyone I know, and I strive every day to capture a mere fragment of her example. In her active art of love, my Grandmother also understands one more crucial lesson from Fromm— that love is an act of faith. As he writes:
To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts oneself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are one’s means of security, makes oneself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern—and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.
Faith is the binding force of love, for it encourages us to take a leap for someone and embrace their connection. Without faith in ourselves and others, we are lost in a morass of ambiguities that stifle our capacity to live full, loving lives. Faith also implies choice; in a sense, we are who we choose to love. In her choice to love me, my Grandmother changed my life, and in who I choose to love, I hope I can return the favor.
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Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. - 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Grandma and me, April 2022.