‘Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between people when it exists within each of them … we can only love others as much as we can love ourselves.’*

What if love was included in the school curriculum?

I don’t mean sex education but love as the ability to value, empathise, and gift to another.

What if we were to see love as an art requiring the mastery of theory and practice towards love becoming instinctive?

And one more thing, says Erich Fromm:

‘the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art’^

Fromm’s contention is that we can invest great amounts of energy into gaining success, prestige, money, and power, but never think this is necessary for love.  The problem is that it can be very hard to have what is most valuable in life from such places as these.

We talk of finding love but not creating or growing love, and yet this is what an art makes possible.  The more adept we become the more we increase freedom and choice.

‘Seeding: The act of putting guerrilla art out into the world.’^

Walker Geoff Nicholson offers many words for slow walking.  Have you ever strolled, wandered, pottered, tottered, dawdled, shuffled, mooched, sauntered, meandered, angled, rambled, shambled, gambolled even?^^  Leonard Cohen sang to be danced to the end of love.

Nothing created or grown happens quickly.  Every day offering us opportunities to learn more of the theory and practice of love.

‘The path is not somewhere in the sky  It is in our heart.’*^

”Is love an art?  Then it requires knowledge and effort.’*

(*From Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly.)
(^From Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving.)
(^From Keri Smith’s The Wander Society.)
(^^From Geoff Nicholson’s The Lost Art of Walking.)
(*^The Buddha, quoted in Keri Smith’s The Wander Society.)