“What if love were less about falling and more about choosing, shaping, and practicing every day?” We often speak of love as something we fall into. The language is everywhere—songs, films, novels. Love is pictured as a river sweeping us away, an accident of the heart, a force we cannot resist. It sounds romantic, but it also makes love seem like something outside our control, something that just happens to us. The psychologist Erich Fromm challenged that idea. He wrote that love is not a passion we are overtaken by, but an action—“the practice of human power, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as a result of compulsion.” In other words, love isn’t an accident of fate. Love is a choice, an act of freedom, a discipline we practice daily. To explore this idea, let me share a short story. The Parable of the Two Bridges A young man once came to an old teacher with a restless heart. “Master,” he said, “I have fallen in love. It is like being swept into a river. I ...
Comments
Post a Comment