| Love is not primarily a relationship
to specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation
of character which determines the relatedness of a
person to the world as a whole, not toward one
"object" of love. If a person loves only one
other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow
men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or
an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love
is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. In
fact, they even believe that it is a proof of the
intensity of their love when they do not love anybody
except the "loved" person. This is the same
fallacy which we have already mentioned above. Because
one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the
soul, one believes that all that is necessary to find the
right object -- and that everything goes by itself
afterward. This attitude can be compared to that of a man
who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art,
claims that he has just to wait for the right object, and
that he will paint beautifully when he finds it. If I
truely love one person I love all persons, I love the
world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else,
"I love you," I must be able to say, "I
love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I
love in you also myself." Saying that love is an orientation is refers to all and not to one does not imply, however, the idea that there are no difference between various types of love, which depend on the kind of object which is loved.
from "The Art of Loving", The Theory of Love |