If You Want to Be Loved, Love

Love is an “Outpouring of Everything Good in You”

In 1958, when American Nobel laureate John Steinbeck’s son Thom was fourteen, he attended boarding school in Connecticut. There, “Thom” (the American novelist and screenwriter Thomas Myles Steinbeck (1944–2016)) met a young girl named Susan with whom he thought he might be in love. Soon after, Thom sent a note home and declared his love for his new school sweetheart. In response, John Steinbeck wrote the following stirring advice on how to navigate love.

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply—of course it isn’t puppy love.

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it—and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone—there is no possible harm in saying so—only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another—but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,
Fa

Love is Intended to be Realized in the Offering, Not in the Receiving

According to University of South Florida’s Seneca scholar Anna Lydia Motto, the great Stoic philosopher’s writings are chockfull of his profound understanding of the true significance of the many forms of love—i.e., love for one’s spouse, family, friends, fellow humans, and country.

In Moral Letters to Lucilius (Latin orig. Epistulae morales ad Lucilium), Seneca quotes his friend and fellow Stoic philosopher Hecato (or Hecaton of Rhodes):

I shall show you a love
potion without a drug, without
a herb; without the incantation
of any sorceress: if you want
to be loved, love.

The Ability to Love is a Faculty to Develop and Practice

Love is an oft-misunderstood concept. The German Philosopher Erich Fromm (1900–1980) wrote in his brilliant The Art of Loving (1956) “Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable.”

Love is not something to fall into after fortuitously discovering the person (or any desirable object). Love is something we learn to “do” from years of arduous toil.

Any loving relationship demands compromise, cooperation, acceptance, forgiveness, tolerance, stability, devotion, and commitment. Genuine love, therefore, involves cultivating, nurturing, and practicing the cognitive and emotional faculty of loving.

Idea for Impact: Love, and Be Deserving of Love

To relish this complex and richest of all experiences, focus on offering love rather than on being loved.

As the Indian philosopher Nolini Kanta Gupta (1889–1983) once said, “The secret of love is the joy of self-giving. The secret of joy is self-giving. If any part in you is without joy, it means that it has not given itself, it wants to keep itself for itself.”

If you want to be loved, love.

No one unqualified to bestow love upon others is himself/herself deserving of love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!