Monday, June 11, 2018

Meditating on a memory

Love and Will ~ by Rollo May, 1969, philosophy
"The heart of man's [sic] dilemma, according to Rollo May, is the failure to understand the real meaning of love and will, their source and interrelation.  Bringing fresh insight to these concepts, May shows how we can attain a deeper consciousness." ― from the back cover.
It was the early 1970s.  I was in college full-time, was a single mom of three children, and left my mother with them while I stuffed ads and comics into the Sunday edition of the local newspaper on Saturday nights.  The presses were always breaking down, meaning we had to stand around and wait until they were repaired.  So I always took a book along with me.

One time, I took Love and Will to work.  Rollo May was an influential existential psychologist, and I was studying existentialism for my degree in Philosophy and Religion.  Some of the other women stuffing the Sunday papers with me apparently read mostly light romance novels.  One near me leaned over to read the title out loud, smiled, and cooed, "Ooooooh, LOVE !"  I had to explain that it was a philosophy book, not a romance novel.  If not for her remark, I wouldn't remember this was the book I had with me that night.

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