“Love” by Leo Buscaglia
Introduction
In the winter of 1969, an intelligent, sensitive female student of mine committed suicide. She was from a seemingly fine upper middle clas s family. Her grades were excel lent. She was popular and sought after. On the particular day in January she drove her car along the cliffs of Pacific Palisades in Los A ngeles, left the motor runn ing, walked to the edge of a deep cliff overlooking the sea and leaped to her death on the rocks below. She left no note, not a word of explanation. She was only twenty.
I have never been able to forget her eyes; alert, alive, responsive, full of promise. I can even recall her papers and examinations which I always read with interest. I wrote on one of her papers which she never received, “A very fine paper. Perceptive, intelligent and sensitive. It indicates your ability to apply what you have learned to your ‘real’ life. Nice work!” What did I know about her “real” life?
I often wonder what I would read in her eyes or her papers if I could see them now. But, as with so many people and situations in our life, we superficially experience them, they pass and can never again be experienced in the same manner.
I was not blaming myself for her death. I simply wondered what I might have done; if I could have, even momentarily, helped.
It was this question, more than anything else, that led me, in that year, to start an experimental class. It was to be an informal group with voluntary attendance, where any student could be present or drop out at any time, if he so desired. It was to be dedicated to personal growth. I did not want it to become problem-centered or group psychotherapy nor an encounter group. I was an educator, not a psychotherapist. I wanted this class to be a unique experience in learning. I wanted it to have a definite, yet loose, framework and be of broad interest and import to the student. I wanted it to be related to his immediate experience. Students with whom I was relating were, more than ever, concerned with life, living, sex, growth, responsibility, death, hope, the future. It was obvious that the only subject which encompassed, and was at the core of all these concerns and more, was love.
I called the class, “Love Class.”
I knew beforehand that I could not “teach”—in the formal sense—such a class. It would be presumptuous. I too was limited in my knowledge and experience of the subject. I was as actively engaged as any of my students in discovering what the real meanings of the word were. I would only be able to act as a facilitator to the students as we guided each other closer to an understanding of the delicate phenomenon of human love.
My determination to start such a class was met with no resistance as long as it was taught free of salary and on my own time without load credit. Of course, a few eyebrows were raised by those who didn’t consider love a scholarly subject nor a serious part of a university curriculum.
I was highly amused in the ensuing weeks by the odd looks I received from some colleagues. One professor, in discussing my plans over lunch in the Faculty Center, called love—and anyone who purported to teach it—“irrelevant!” Others asked mockingly and with a wild leer, if the class had a lab requirement and was I going to be the primary investigator.
Nevertheless, student attendance at the class kept growing until we had to close enrollment with 100 students per year. The students were of all ages, from freshmen to graduates, obviously of varying degrees of experience and sophistication. All were unique and, as such, had individual approaches to the subject and some special knowledge to share.
This book is an outgrowth of “Love Class.” It is, as such, in no way intended to be a scholarly, deeply philosophical or definitive work on love. It’s rather a sharing of some of the practical and vital ideas, feelings and observations which emerged from the group that seemed to me relevant to the human condition. It might be said that the classes and I wrote this book together. The book may be said to have over 400 authors.
We never attempted nor in three years were able to define love. We felt as we grew in love, that to define it would be to delimit it and love seemed infinite. As one student stated, “I find love much like a mirror. When I love another, he becomes my mirror and I become his, and reflecting in each other’s love we see infinity!”
Forward to Love
(An excerpt from a speech delivered in Texas 1970— and since.)
If we are going to be “loving” together, it’s important that you know who I am and where I’m “at.” My name is B-U-S-C-A-G-L-I-A, and it’s pronounced like everything in the world. I always start by telling this story because I think it’s delightful. Recently I placed a long distance call, the line was busy, and the operator said she’d call me back. I gave her my name, waited a while, and then the phone rang. When I picked it up, she said. “Would you please tell Dr. Boxcar that his telephone call is through?” I said, “Could that be Buscaglia?” She giggled and said, “Sir, it could be d amn near anything!”
I have a wonderful time with my name because not only is it Buscaglia, but if you’ll look at it you’ll see that it’s also Leo F. Well, it’s really Leonardo, the middle initial is F, but that’s really the first name, and it’s Felice, that means happiness. Isn’t that fantastic? Felice Leonardo Buscaglia! Recently I wanted to visit the Communist-block countries, and I needed a visa. I was in a large room in Los Angeles and filled out a very official form which I turned in. After which, I was asked to sit down and wait for my name to be called. When the time came, this poor man stood at his counter for a moment and looked at the form and I knew it was me he was going to call. He did sort of a double take, took a deep breath, looked up, and said, “Phyllis?” And I swear I’ll answer to anything, but Phyllis.
Yes, I am in a “love bag,” and I’m not ashamed of it. I have one single message, and I can give you that now. Then you can lay the book aside, go for a walk and hold hands with someone or what you will.
We are in a time in our society when we’re really beginning to look at what life is all about, what is learning, and what are the processes of change. We’re becoming acquainted with a new nomenclature. We’re looking at “conditioning,” we’re looking at “behavior shaping and modification,” reinforcement, that it is necessary to reinforce, that what is reinforced will probably effect behavior. We are using all kinds of things to reinforce. We’re us ing money, w e’re using bells, we’re using electric shocks. We’re even using candy. M M’s have become the big thing, and when somebody gives the correct response, we pop an M M into his mouth. My message to you today is simply that the best M M in the world is a warm, pulsating, non-melting human being—YOU! Real love is a very human phenomenon.
About five years ago I started a love class at the University. I am—-I’m teaching a class in love, and we are probably the only University in the country that does have such a class. It meets on Tuesday nights. We sit on the fl oor and relate, and I’m sure the vibrations are felt all over the world. I don’t teach love, of course, I simply facilitate growth in love.
Love is a learned phenomenon, and I think the sociologists, the anthropologists, the psychologists, will tell us this with no hesitation. What worries me is that maybe many of us are not happy with the way we’ve learned it. As exper ienced human beings we must certainly believe in one thing more than anything else—we believe in change. And so, if you don’t like where you’re at in terms of love, you can change it, you can create a new scene. You can only give away what you have. That’s the miracle. If you have love, you can give it. If you don’t have it, you don’t have it to give. Actually it’s not really even a matter of giving, is it? It’s a matter of sharing. Whatever I have I can share with you. I don’t lose it because I still have it. For example, I could teach every reader everything I know. I would still know everything I know. It is possible for me—and not unreasonable—to love everyone with equal intensity and still have all the love energy I have ever had. There are a lot of miracles to being a human being, but this is one of the greatest miracles.
Only recently has it become at all defensible to even mention the word “love.” Every time I go to speak somewhere, someone asks, “Will you talk about love?” I reply, “Sure,” and they say, “What’s your title?” I reply, “Let’s just call it ‘Love.’ ” There’s a brief hesitation, and then they say, “Well, you know, this is a professional meeting, and it may not be understood. What will the press say?” So I suggest “Affect as a Behavior Modifier,” and they agree that sounds more acceptable and scientific and everyone is happy.
Love has really been ignored by the scientists. It’s amazing. My students and I did a study. We went through books in psychology. We went through books in sociology. We went through books in anthropology, and we were hard pressed to find even a reference to the word “love.” This is shocking because it is something we all know we need, something we’re all continually looking for, and yet there’s no class in it. It’s just assumed that it comes to us by and through some mysterious life force.
One of Pitirim Sorokin’s last books was called The Ways and Power of Love . It’s full of wonderful studies of affect in which this man engaged because he was really worried about the fact that everybody seemed to be going in opposite directions. Dr. Albert Schweitzer said, “We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.” I feel this, you know this, and Dr. Sorokin thought it was true, too. In…
