What is love? M. Scott Peck’s unexpected definition

How do you begin to define love? M. Scott Peck in his book The Road Less Traveled has a meticulously crafted section on the subject. In order to truly define what it is, he first discusses what love is NOT, starting with ‘falling in love’. 

Sexually motivated, ‘falling in love’ is a temporary collapse of one’s ego boundaries to become ‘one with another’. It is an attempt at forming a symbiotic relationship to feel ‘whole’ or complete, much like an infant’s symbiosis with its mother. 

To say ‘I can't live without this person’ isn’t love, it is ‘parasitism’. A manifestation of this is pathological dependency, or the inability to experience wholeness without another. It is the desire to constantly be in a passive state of receiving care and attention.

Dependency may appear as love since it is a force that causes people to fiercely attach themselves to one another. However, it nourishes infantilism rather than growth. 

Similarly, love isn’t a feeling. Far from being arbitrary or impulse driven, it is volitional and thus an act of choice. Since it’s an act of choice, Love is as love does. 

This means that just having the desire to love is not the same as actually practicing love. It is in one’s actions that love is exercised. And since it’s an act of will, it implies effort. Therefore, contrary to popular belief, love is work. 

A simple example is sincere listening instead of listening selectively, passively or with an agenda. True listening entails giving attention, acknowledgement and mirroring to another. It entails commitment to the setting, the person and thus demands effort. 

This effort and exercise of will is the essence of love, but for what? Peck concludes it is spiritual growth. Love is the ability and willingness to extend oneself for the spiritual growth of oneself or another. 

The conscious/unconscious intention of the lover; the ability to self-love and be independent while loving another (and receiving love); the desire to extend oneself through commitment, attention and effort. These are all factors in defining and exercising love. 

Bottom line: one can conclude that love is almost discipline. This is not to remove the mystery, joy or intensity often associated with love. However, disciplined love that nurtures spiritual growth, of oneself or the other, is surely the love that surpasses all others.