Why do we need to have love?
It’s understandable why we need air, food, water, and shelter – but why love?
Babies who are fed, clothed, and otherwise taken care of but not hugged will actually die. And while merely being hugged is not necessarily “love,” it seems very clear that one ought to have love in one’s life or else it will probably be a miserable life.
A loveless existence may contain its share of pleasures, but it will never be happy in a deep, true, and lasting way. So why is this?
According to bestselling psychologist and humanist Erich Fromm, it’s because of the self-reflective awareness of human beings. Our minds are such that we are not only mindful, but self-aware – and that initial perception of self inevitably leads to fear and aloneness. Infants tend not to perceive a world outside themselves – indeed, they don’t even perceive themselves. But soon enough they perceive that there’s a “me” and a “not-me,” and this sense of mysterious otherness frightens them. And so they cling fiercely to mother, typically not able to withstand even a distance of several feet.
It’s rather the same with adults, though naturally the desire for mother is no longer the case. But a yearning for security, for emotional comfort, for just the kind of feelings which was formerly provided by mother – that still exists, only other forms, namely another person. In a sense, we transfer our continuing emotional needs onto the beloved.
And yet, this seriously isn’t love. This is just not a lasting concern for the other person’s well-being, as expressed daily in loving acts that promote his or her well-being. This can be merely a displacement of desires onto a love object – an idol, even. And we mistake it for love because we confuse love with desire.
