Today I want to talk about a subject that has accompanied me through many stages of my life, though not always consciously: the art of loving. I call it an art because, as I discovered while reading Erich Fromm, love is not something that simply happens; it is something you learn, cultivate, and refine.

When I read The Art of Loving, I understood something that—though it sounds obvious—we often forget: true love is neither an accident nor an everlasting love-at-first-sight. It is an active decision and a constant practice.

Fromm explains that loving involves much more than feeling attraction. To love is to:

• Care, without intruding.
• Know, without controlling.
• Respect, without idealizing.
• Take responsibility, without possessing.

And that, believe me, is harder than it seems.

It made me think: How many times have I expected love to “feel nice” all the time, without making the real effort to build it? How many times have I mistaken comfort or emotional need for genuine love?

Loving, like any art, demands preparation, patience, and dedication. No one expects to play the piano perfectly without practice. No one should expect to love in a healthy way without learning, making mistakes, and improving.

Another idea that resonated with me was that you cannot love others in a mature way if you have not learned to love yourself in a healthy way—not from narcissism, but from honest acceptance: recognizing your flaws, your light, your shadows, and working on them without beating yourself up.

In short, The Art of Loving left me with a clear lesson: the kind of love worth building requires conscious effort. It is not spontaneous. And that does not make it any less magical; it makes it more real.

So the next time we talk about “finding love,” perhaps we should think more about building it—day by day, decision by decision.