To Have or to Be !

Some very unintentional acts on our part can often dramatically change the way we think, or change the very course of our lives. Once, while waiting for a delayed flight, I strolled into a bookshop at the airport. On the shelf, I saw a book with a title 'To Have or to Be' by Erich Fromm. I had neither heard of the book nor knew anything about the author. It was the title that intrigued me. Was the author going to discuss the human dilemma, like the Prince of Denmark, Hamlet's confusion over 'To Be or not to Be'? Nothing of the sort! The book, at least for me beamed a searchlight, on our way of thinking or living out our lives. It was so engrossing, that I finished it in one go during the flight. Since then I have returned again and again to the book. So, what is the difference between 'To Have' or 'To Be'?

In the preface, Erich Fromm gives two examples, to bring out very vividly the difference, between 'Having' and 'Being'. In the first story, a run-of-the-mill person, like you or me, while wandering through the woods, spots a beautiful wild flower. 'This is a beautiful flower, I must pluck it and take it home', he says to himself. Without a second thought, he stoops and plucks the flower. Its care free swaying in the wild wind is gone for ever and its life nipped. This is the example of 'Having'.

On the other hand, a Zen master, treading the same path in the woods, is struck by the wild beauty of the same flower. He stops and stares, till he is lost in the flower. In fact, he becomes the flower! He moves on without, plucking or touching the flower - leaving it to live its wildness. For that is the 'dharma' of the wild! The Zen master need not have cut short, the life of wild flower. If he closes his eyes, that flower is swaying in the wind, for the entire length of the master's life! This is not such an experience, that only the exalted can experience. We experience this all the time, when we are lost in a sunset or a great piece of music. We feel no urge to possess the sunset, for it can always flash on our inward eye.

The same is true of any person we may be fascinated or infatuated with. We want that person or the thing to be ours and ours alone. Like water in our palms! The more we close our fist to possess all the water, the more the water escapes our grip! This is so true in personal relationships - real unselfish love means, to set the other person free. The mystical anomaly is, that the freer the object of our fascination, the more that person belongs to you, unfettered! That much more rewarding are the relationships - unconditional and undemanding!

As a child, whenever I told my Dad, that I wanted to possess the latest music system (or some such thing), which my friend had, his patent response would be, 'It is more important to learn how to understand and appreciate good music, than to possess the latest player'. He would add, 'Your friend has music, but you have the ear!'

A reviewer has summed up the message of Fromm's book thus:

"To Have or To Be (1976) was Erich Fromm's last major work. In it he argues that two ways of existence were competing for 'the spirit of mankind' - having and being. The having mode looks to things and material possessions and is based on aggression and greed. The being mode is rooted in love and is concerned with shared experience and productive activity. The dominance of the having mode (as he argued in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness) was bringing the world to the edge of disaster (ecological, social and psychological). Erich Fromm argued that only a fundamental change in human character 'from a preponderance of the having mode to a preponderance of the being mode of existence can save us from a psychological and economic catastrophe."

Some gems from Fromm's other books are:

"Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world."

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."

"If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism."

"In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead."

Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self."

"The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science."

"The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have"