Essay About Love in The Road Less Traveled

1404 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The concept of love

The Element of Love in The Road Less Traveled

Scott Peck expresses his unusual perspective of love in his work, The Road Less Traveled. Peck's view of love was a correction to what he thought everyone else thought love was. This paper will be an explanation of Peck's beliefs about love, a contrasting view on love, and my personal knowledge of Peck's beliefs.

Peck had a very pessimistic and, at times, a contradicting view of what is believed to be "love" and introduced that in his section on the definition of love. Peck (1978) believed "Love is too large, too deep ever to be truly understood or measured or limited within the framework of words"(page 81). Later on in that same page Peck offers a definition of love as being "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's personal growth"(page 81). He also breaks down his definition into five comments: First- The definition has a goal or a purpose, Second- The definition given is a circular process, Third- The definition includes self-love as love for the other, Fourth- The definition implies effort, and Fifth- The definition implies a "will" to do something rather than just a desire. Peck believes that lots of suffering can be avoided if a person would take the time out to do away with the common misconceptions of love and came to a more precise meaning of love. Peck's section called "The Myth of Romantic Love" delves deeper into why he believes that people do not fully understand the meaning of true love. Peck says, "...the experience of falling in love probably must have as one of its characteristics the illusion that the experience will last forever"(page 91). He blames our mentality of this "fairy tale" love on society. In this section Peck also discusses the myth that there is one man for every one woman and vice versa. When a couple falls out of love, "...then it is clear that a dreadful mistake was made, we misread the stars, we did not hook up with our one and only perfect match, what we thought was love was not real or "true" love, and nothing can be done about the situation except to live unhappily ever after or get divorced" (page 91). Peck believes that couples that live by this type of mentality prize togetherness and see it as a sign of a healthy marriage but in actuality it is not.

Show More
Related

  • The Decisions of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in WWII

    634 Words  | 2 Pages

    The second time FDR, Churchill and Stalin met was the Yalta Conference to talk about four important things (Morris 1739). An...

    Read More

  • Is Walmart Good Or Bad For Health And Social Care?

    1724 Words  | 4 Pages

    Today Wal-mart has a higher GDP than the entire country of Switzerland, but don’t worry they’re pretty neutral about it. But there has also been news about how they treat there employees. In 2004 an article was released entitled Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart, and soon after Washington got involved. The bad publicity took a toll on Wal-mart and in fact is still today, Maryland passed a law in January, 2006, that said larger employers, such as Wal-mart, must spend at least 8% of their payroll on health benefits for their employees, and now many other states have followed suit. The bad publicity also made it so 8% of customers shop elsewhere because of what they’ve heard, this has caused lower expected sales around the holidays during 2004, and 2005. Some things they’ve done is in 2006 they paid employees on average 9.36 dollars, while other major retailers like Target and Sears pay on average 11.08 dollars. While this can be easily denied by Wal-mart, another way they have gained bad publicity is from something called off-the-clock work. If they had not finished their job they had to clock out and then still finish their job, meaning they wouldn’t get paid for

    Read More

  • Essay About Love in Much Ado About Nothing

    378 Words  | 1 Pages

    Shakespeare My first impression of Much Ado About Nothing is that it would be a love story.  Although it is categorised as a Shakespearean comedy, I found the many "funny" parts of the play were foggy and required you to read the scene over a few times before you understood them.  But then again, I had to read the whole scene over again a few times to understand anything.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Carver's "What We Talk about When We Talk about Love"

    1632 Words  | 4 Pages

    Love cannot be defined in one sentence or even a paragraph. Every human has his or her own definition of love because people usually define love based on their cultures, backgrounds, social classes, educations, and their societies. In this essay, the main point will be the different kinds of love that Carver illustrates in his story “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love.” In Carver’s story, there are some points that I can relate to my personal experience. There are a few characteristics and symbols in the story that are really important to understand in order to define what a real love is and find the intention thrown out the story. These characteristics includes, Mel, Terri and Ed and Terri’s relationship. Furthermore, symbols such as ”sunlight” and “dark room”,” cardiologist” and “silence” at the end of the story can have a specific intention thrown out of the story.

    Read More

  • Wal-Mart is Bad For America

    841 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ir employees without their knowledge at all. Because of their prices being low, wage is even lower to make an over decent profit. Wal-Mart is a growing competitor to those who have enough trouble just surviving. It is easier for everyone just to back-off and let them do what they want, but they have taken advantage of that and the people do not like that.

    Read More

  • Jury Discrimination Essay

    1536 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...hallenges, the prosecutor removed all African American jurors and left Batson to be charged by an all- white jury. Can a party remove jurors who are similar to the defendant? The court ruled that when removing individuals from a jury, they must prove that the reason for doing so was for a justified reason (Batson V. Kentucky 1986).

    Read More

  • Euthanasia

    810 Words  | 2 Pages

    ... the patient appears at times to be awake” (Rakestraw, 392). In order to employ the principle of mercy as stated before, it requires that suffering be present. A patient with no self-awareness will not be cognizant of one’s physical suffering. Therefore, the principle to which Battin argues the justification of euthanasia is extraneous under persistent vegetative state circumstances.

    Read More

  • Magnetism And Magnetism

    831 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...nduced in a conductor moving at right angles to and cutting across a magnetic flux. On the other hand, magnet is a useful in our daily life such as it can hold some documents and use to move an object. For example, a bicycle dynamo is a small generator fitted by bicycle to provide electricity for the lights bulb, it using the principle of electromagnetism. There are 2 law of electromagnetic induction such as Faraday’s Law and Lenz’s Law. In the other hand, Lenz’s Law state that induced current always flows in such a direction so as to opposite the change causing it. When north pole is approach the solenoid, the front part of solenoid will creates a north pole to produce a force of repulsion to oppose the change of motion. And the direction of current in the solenoid can determined by Right-hand Grip Rule. Lenz’s Law also is a form of law of conservation of energy.

    Read More

  • Perception Of Love In Barbara Lee Fredrickson's Love 2.0

    1585 Words  | 4 Pages

    Barbara Lee Fredrickson, a psychologist, introduces a new conception of love to the readers. She tries to simplify the perception of love most people have known for their entire life. The special bonds and magical bond that continues the love for eternity are all myths and lies. Something that poisons our minds to be committed to one another. The definition of Fredrickson’s conception of “love” is more scientific than emotional. When defining love, it is more dependent on the activity of the brain, “positivity resonance”, and love hormones. The claim that Fredrickson makes in Love 2.0 does give a critical point of love, that it is simpler than you think. However, not every conception of love does Fredrickson explain it to be biological. The

    Read More

  • Why The Executive Branch Is The Most Powerful

    631 Words  | 2 Pages

    But the Executive branch has it all, power, commands, and says to do stuff! From major responsibilities that have to do with other courtiers to processing a law. To Presidency which allows him to do as wished and the Executive there to support him. Executive has the power because everything is mainly about the President. The rest are just based on courts and cases but the Executive has more control in everything they do. Therefore I believe the Executive has more power and is more influential than the rest of the government

    Read More

  • Essay On Spirituality And Spirituality

    1015 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the words of Peck, love is defined as an extension of ones self for the purpose to nurture ones own or another’s growth. Peck also emphasizes on the fact that to love someone is an act of will, it is choice made by the individual and isn’t based upon feelings, their will be many times in a relationship where an individual won’t feel like loving their spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, or in terms of non romantic relationships, friends and family. To will oneself to love someone is to love the other person even when you don’t feel like it. To wake up each day knowing that you choose to love this person. The difference between the worlds view on love and Pecks’ view on love is that when things get difficult you either leave because the feeling is no longer there or you choose to love the love the person through the difficulties that you both face and come out of it stronger. Peck describes what love is and what it isn’t. What he describes is much different from what the world describes it as. The world describes it as dependent, to live without your love is to die as displayed in Shakespeare “ Romeo and Juliet”. Peck states in his book that in order to truly love another person one must be able to live without that person. This implies the will to live and love this person despite being able to live with out the other

    Read More

  • Much Ado About Nothing Essay: Many Facets of Love Explored

    850 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Shakespeare's romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare focuses a great deal of time to the ideas of young, lustful, and intellectual love. Claudio and Hero, Borachio and Margaret, and Benedick and Beatrice, respectively, each represent one of the basic aspects of love. Shakespeare is careful to point out that not one path is better than another. The paths are merely different, and all end happily. Shakespeare also explores the different aspects of courtship, weddings, and the different facets of love.

    Read More

  • Love Theory Essay

    1377 Words  | 3 Pages

    Over many years philosophers and psychologists have proposed various aspects of love. Love is wildly varied in its expression and its experience; its study can contribute benefit from both the incisive and rigorous views yielded by psychologists and the wide-angle, social, cultural, and historical views employed by sociologists.

    Read More

  • 1,000 Word Essay On THE LOVE STORY

    1079 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are many positive things and negative things about the movie and the story. In the movie

    Read More

  • Essay About Love: Speaking of Love

    433 Words  | 1 Pages

    What is love? Love is a very special and meaningful word to each human being. Each human being has his/her own thoughts about love to guide himself/herself to land safely and smoothly into the kingdom of Love. Without this preconceived idea of love, people would be acting like a blind person searching for the light with thousand of obstacles in front of him.

    Read More

More about Essay About Love in The Road Less Traveled

Open Document