The Four Skills That Mend Love

"Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice."

     — Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving


We spend countless hours at the driving range to improve our golf swing.

We practice the guitar until calluses form on our fingertips,

and strike the piano keys over and over until our hands move with ease.

Yet, strangely enough, when it comes to love—the one thing we should learn most carefully—we often assume that it should come naturally, requiring no effort at all.


Not long ago, I attended the 60th wedding anniversary celebration of an older couple.

During the reception, the emcee asked the husband,

“Throughout your marriage, did you ever think about getting a divorce?”

With a gentle smile, he replied,

“When we were young, we didn't throw away things just because they were broken.

We repaired them—and kept using them.”


Love, too, gathers rust as the years pass.

Sometimes it breaks.

We argue.

We wound one another.

We become disappointed.

At such moments, what we need is not another beginning,

but the skill to repair love.

Erich Fromm described four essential elements of that art:

Care, Responsibility, Respect, and Knowledge.

There is perhaps no skill in life that is more demanding—

or more beautiful—

than the art of loving.

     — From Dawn Light Letter by Ki Jun Kwon


Reflection of the Day

★ Love may arrive like destiny in the beginning.

But what preserves it through the years is not emotion alone—it is a heart willing to learn, to practice, and to grow.

Love is life's most beautiful art, and its most challenging one. ★

[Go back to Korean version] 한국어

[www.DawnLightLetter.com] 새벽 빛 편지


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When I Am Too Happy, I Close My Eyes

You would not know this— when I am too happy, I close my eyes. It is because I long, with all my heart, for this happiness not to slip away. When I love too deeply, I fall silent. For once I speak those words aloud, I can never call them again with quite the same feeling.            — From I Love, Yet Do Not Love by Jin-guk Cho — At times, a profound sense of happiness comes over us. We find ourselves thinking, So this is what happiness feels like, and at the same time, we wonder, Am I truly allowed to feel this happy? In such moments, we instinctively close our eyes— as if to hold that happiness close within our hearts. For true happiness is not something to be spoken, but something to be quietly embraced. When one comes to truly love another, the words “I love you” are not easily spoken. Instead, one simply gazes in silence. It is because we wish to cherish that love deep within our hearts. True love is not found in words, but in the trembling that passes...
Read more

Regrets at the Edge of Life

Australian bestselling author Bronnie Ware, in her book 'The Top Five Regrets of the Dying' , reflects on the five most common regrets expressed by those nearing the end of their lives: 1. "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."  2. "I wish I hadn't worked so hard."  3. "I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings."  4. "I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends."  5. "I wish that I had let myself be happier."  One day, we all find ourselves looking back on the path we have traveled. What lingers as regret may not be the grand ambitions we failed to achieve, but rather the quiet intentions we never chose to act upon. There is a saying that life follows the sequence of ABCD: A man is born, passes through countless choices, and ultimately arrives at death— Birth, Choice, and Death . Though it may sound like a playful notion, it carries a certain truth. E...
Read more

One Day I Will Sit Alone in a Dim Tavern

"My daughter has just begun her first menstruation. I can no longer hold her in my arms. Life has become unbearable. A life that longs to collapse on the spot, like a garment slipping from a hanger. What, after all, could be more commonplace than sorrow? And so, one day, I will sit alone in a dim tavern." — From Hwang Ji-woo's One Day I Will Sit in a Dim Tavern "It is a self-portrait of the '475 Generation'—those in their forties, born in the 1950s and educated in the 1970s—who barely survived the turmoil of Korea's IMF crisis in the late 1990s. Long past ten o'clock at night, in a Korean-town computer academy, middle-aged men with graying hair sit before their monitors, striking the keyboards with awkward determination. Caught between the Internet generation in their thirties and the established generation in their fifties, they were the last generation raised on the abacus and the first generation forced to learn computers. The sight of t...
Read more