Is Love An Art?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Is love an art? If so, it takes knowledge and effort. Or maybe love is a pleasant feeling, to experience which is a matter of chance, something that falls to a person in case of luck

It's not that people think that love is unimportant. They crave it, they watch countless movies about happy and unhappy love stories, they listen to hundreds of silly love songs, but hardly anyone really thinks there is any need to learn to love. This particular attitude is based on several premises, which, individually and in combination, tend to help maintain it.

For most people, the problem with love is being beloved, not that be in love, be able to love. This means that the essence of the problem for them is to be loved, to arouse a feeling of self-love. They go to achieve this goal in several ways. The first, which men usually use, is to become lucky, to become strong and wealthy as much as the social situation allows. Another way, usually used by women, is to make yourself attractive by carefully monitoring your body, clothes, etc. Other ways of acquiring your own attractiveness, used by both men and women, are to develop good manners. the ability to conduct an interesting conversation, willingness to help, modesty, unpretentiousness. Many of the pathways to gaining the ability to arouse self-love are the same pathways that are used to achieve good fortune, to make useful friends and powerful connections. Obviously, for most people in our culture, the ability to arouse love is, in essence, a combination of likability and sex appeal.

The second the premise of treating love as something that does not require learning is to assume that the problem of love is a problem object, not a problem capabilities … People think it's easy to love, but finding a true love object - or being loved by that object - is difficult. This attitude has several reasons, rooted in the development of modern society. One reason is the great change that took place in the twentieth century with regard to the choice of "love object". In the Victorian era, as in many traditional cultures, love was not, in most cases, a spontaneous, personal experience that would then lead to marriage. On the contrary, marriage was based on an agreement, whether between families, or between intermediaries in matters of marriage, or without the help of such intermediaries; it was made on the basis of taking into account social conditions, and love was believed to begin to develop from the time the marriage was concluded. Over the past several generations, the concept of romantic love has become universal in the Western world. In the United States, although considerations of the contractual nature of marriage have not yet been completely supplanted, most people seek romantic love, a personal experience of love that should then lead to marriage. This new understanding of the freedom of love was to greatly increase the importance of object to the detriment of the meaning function.

Another characteristic feature of modern culture is closely related to this factor. Our entire culture is based on the desire to buy, on the idea of mutually beneficial exchange. The happiness of a modern person consists in the joyful excitement that he experiences when looking at the windows of a store and buying everything that he can afford to buy, either for cash or in installments. He (or she) looks at people in the same way. For a man, an attractive woman - for a woman, an attractive man is the prey they are for each other. Attractiveness usually means a beautiful package of properties that are popular and sought after in the personal market. What makes a person attractive especially depends on the fashion of the given time, both physical and spiritual. In the twenties, a woman who knew how to drink and smoke, a broken and sexy woman was considered attractive, and today fashion requires more thriftiness and modesty. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a man had to be aggressive and ambitious in order to become an attractive "commodity"; today he must be sociable and tolerant. In addition, the feeling of falling in love usually develops only in relation to such a human product that is within the reach of one's own choice. I am looking for benefits: the object must be desirable from the point of view of social value, and at the same time, he himself must desire me, taking into account my hidden and obvious merits and capabilities. Two people fall in love when they feel that they have found the best object on the market, while keeping in mind the boundaries of their own exchange fund. Often, as with real estate purchases, hidden opportunities that can develop over time play a prominent role in this transaction. It is hardly surprising that in a culture where market orientation prevails and where material success is of outstanding value, human love relationships follow the same patterns that govern the market.

Third the delusion that leads to the conviction that you do not need to learn anything in love consists in mixing the initial feeling of being in love with the permanent state of being in love. If two strangers to each other, as we all are, suddenly allow the wall separating them to collapse, this moment of unity will become one of the most exciting experiences in life. It contains everything that is most beautiful and miraculous for people who were previously disunited, isolated, deprived of love. This miracle of unexpected intimacy is often easier when it begins with physical attraction and satisfaction. However, this type of love, by its very nature, is not durable. Two people get to know each other better and better, their closeness loses its wonderful character more and more, until, finally, their antagonism, their disappointment, their satiety with each other does not kill what remains of their initial excitement. At first they did not know all this; they were, indeed, captured by a wave of blind attraction. The "obsession" with each other is proof of the strength of their love, although it could only testify to the degree of their previous loneliness.

This attitude that nothing is easier than love continues to be the prevailing idea about love, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There is hardly any activity, some kind of occupation, which would start with such great hopes and expectations, and which would nevertheless fail as unchanging as love. If it were any other activity, people would do everything possible to understand the reasons for the failure, and learn to do the best way for the given business, or they would give up this activity. Since the latter is impossible in relation to love, the only adequate way to avoid failure in love is to investigate the reasons for this failure and move on to studying the meaning of love.

The first step that needs to be taken is to realize that love is an art, just like the art of living: if we want to learn to love, we must do exactly the same as we have to do when we want to learn any other art, say, music, painting, carpentry, medicine or engineering.

What steps are required in teaching any art?

The process of teaching art can be sequentially divided into two stages: first - mastering the theory; the second is mastery of practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first of all know certain facts about the human body and about various diseases. But even when I have acquired all this theoretical knowledge, I still cannot be considered versed in the art of medicine. I will become a master in this business after a long practice, when, finally, the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice will merge into one - into my intuition, which is the essence of mastery in any art. But along with theory and practice, there is a third factor that is necessary in order to become a master in any art - mastery of art must become the subject of the highest concentration; there should be nothing more important in the world than this art. This applies to music, medicine, carpentry - as well as love. And, perhaps, this is the answer to the question why people of our culture so rarely study this art in spite of their obvious failures in it. Despite the deeply rooted thirst for love, almost everything else is considered almost more important than love: success, prestige, money, power. Almost all of our energy is spent in teaching how to achieve these goals, and almost none in teaching the art of love.

Perhaps, only those things with the help of which one can acquire money or prestige, and love that is beneficial only to the soul ”, But useless in the modern sense, is it a luxury to which we do not have the right to give a lot of energy?