Meaning of love Kinds of Love

3. Love

The term of love has important roles in this study because it is used as a means to discuss the formulated problem. This is used to find out the meanings and kind of love performed by Sara to her dying daughter.

a. Meaning of love

Love is very important in our life. We need to love and to be loved in order to make our life complete and to raise our spirit in bringing out the best in each of us. There are many possibilities in giving the meaning of love in this world. Every one has different interpretation and expression of love. According to Pieper 19-21 in his book About Love, the basis of love signifies approval. This approval refers to one’s existence that it is good that you exist in this world. It also deals with the expression of will in which loving means a mode of willing. In this theory then, a lover is willing to do action on the basis of motives and inspires. Marcel as quoted by Pieper 23 states that “To love a person means to say: You will not die. This is the partisanship for the existence of the beloved.” Thus, a lover concerns on one beloved’s life and happiness. Fromm 18 says that “love is an activity, not a passive affect: it is standing in, not a falling for.” Here the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving. It is the effortful to care and to give the best for the beloved one. In motherly love, love is the active concern for the life and the growth of her child. A mother will struggle and sacrifice her life for her child’s happiness.

b. Kinds of Love

Fromm in The Art of Loving 6-69 categories love into three parts. They are: 1 Love as the answer to the problem of human existence The existence of human life is based on love. Since their first existence, human beings want to overcome the term of separateness. One way they do to avoid this separateness is by gaining union. However love becomes the way to create the experience of union. Without love human are meaningless. 2 Love between parents and child They are two kinds of love between parents and children. They are fatherly love and motherly love. Mother is the home a child comes from and therefore there is a special relationship between a mother and her child. This relationship starts at the child’s earliest age and it will continue along the child’s development. Motherly love is unconditional. It means that mother loves the newborn infant because it is her child. Thus, the experience of being loved by mother is a passive one. The child has nothing to do to get his or her mother’s love Fromm 35. Furthermore, Fromm explains that mother has the function of making the child secure in life and giving her child happiness. However, a mother should not be overanxious. She has to treat her child to be independent. A mother- centeredness stimulate her child to be dependent on her and being a passive one 36-37. The second type is fatherly love. It is the opposite of motherly love. It can be categorized as conditional love. To get father’s love, we have to do our duty and fulfill his expectation Fromm 36. He has the function to teach, to guide the child in coping with the society, and to lead the child to be disciplined. 3 Love based on the object of love There are various types of love based on the kind of object which is loved. They are brotherly love, motherly love, erotic love, self-love and love of God. Brotherly love is the most fundamental kind of love that underlies all types of love. It is love for all human beings which has the principal that we all are one with responsibility, caring, and respecting each other. In brotherly love, human beings are in need of help. Thus we must have the experience of union with all people to help each other Fromm 39-41. Motherly love is the love of the mother for her child. Motherly love is unconditional affirmation of the child’s life and his needs. There are two aspects in the affirmations of child’s life. Firstly, the care and responsibility are necessary for the preservation of the child’s life and his or her growth. Secondly, the attitude which instills in the child a love for living, which gives him the feeling of good to be alive, good to be a little boy or a girl, and good to be on earth. It requires unselfishness because one gives everything and expecting nothing but the happiness of the loved one. It can be summed up that motherly love is the highest kind of love and the most sacred of all emotional bonds Fromm 41-43. Furthermore, Fromm as quoted in Warga states that motherly love is love for the weak and helpless 316. He emphasizes that caring involves concern on the loved one’s health, growth, stability, and welfare. It is like sharing the beloved one’s feeling. We feel joy in the loved one’s joy and pain when the loved one feels hurt. Meanwhile, responsibility means responding to the beloved one’s need qtd. in Warga 314. Erotic love deals with physical desires which inspire the wish for sexual attraction or union. Meanwhile, self-love has several considerations based on one’s conception. It will be considered as selfishness when a person is interested only in himself. Freud as quoted by Fromm 48 says that self love is the same as narcissism which wants everything for oneself, feels no pleasure in giving, but only in taking. On the contrary, self love is love for and understanding of one’s own life and others. It means that when we love our self, we also love other persons as well as we love our self. Last is love of God. It is the religious form of love. Another type of love proposed by Warga is Agape. He defines that Agape is love of God for a man that signifies a selfless love for one person without expectation in return. To respond God’s love, human being loves each other which can involve a sacrifice by the individual for the sake of other 315-316. Rob in his article A Mother’s love says that a mother love reveals God’s love toward human that their love is unconditional and involves nurturing, protecting, comforting, and providing. It is love which desires only the best for the child http:blogs.myspace.comindex.cfm?fuseaction=blog.viewfriendId=410242242 blogId=463765343. It means that mother’s love can be considered as Agape.

c. The Expression of Love