Dr. Erich Fromm on Wellness (1960)

 

On my bookshelf sits Dr. Erich Fromm's book "Escape from Freedom." I can grasp it at any time, open to any page, and while reading feel as if I have opened my thoughts to what man is capable of mentally (good and bad). Dr. Fromm has a gift for stripping away the blinders acquired by our humanity and revealing to us an honest reflection of our minds, our societies, our potentials and our shortcomings. If we as a human civilization truly want "Peace on Earth and Goodwill for All Men & Women," we can begin with addressing our own mental wellness and rehabilitating/rediscovering what it means to be well (mentally, physically, spiritually, socially).

What I take away from Dr. Fromm is not the absence of illness, but the cultivation of wellness as the key to a healthy and purposeful life. A wellness of one can be reciprocated and shared with a community of many.

Imagine if you were given a community garden to cultivate and maintain. Over time, you decide to only water and maintain what you have labeled your favorite plants, vegetables, and flowers. Eventually, through lack of nourishment, neglected plants and such die. 

The once community garden has become fitting only for your own personal tastes, appealing more to yourself than others who might want to share in the garden. Not only might you have lost certain high-level vitamins and nutrients of vegetables, fruits, beans and greens you have let fester and fail, but your ignorance of their nutritional value for human consumption has compromised your own personal health. What you thought space consuming, distasteful, and unappealing plantings were actually important to your very well-being and that of others. 

The effects a vibrant, colorful, sweet-smelling flower can have on individuals whose lives might be lacking love and beauty can be healing and transforming.  The taste of a ripe, juicy and sweet strawberry can force even the most irritable neighbor to close his/her eyes and dream of pleasantries once experienced, perhaps a young love or favorite dessert.  

The varieties of beauty and nourishment found in the sights, flavors, and aromas a diverse garden produces are endless, if only the gardener is open to its full potential. This is the gardener's responsibility and what he is accountable for as a cultivator and caretaker. 

Wpowell

Escape from Freedom is a book by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, first published in the United States by Farrar & Rinehart^[1] in 1941 with the title Escape from Freedom and a year later as The Fear of Freedom in UK by Routledge & Kegan Paul. It was translated into German and first published in 1952 under the title Die Angst vor der Freiheit (The Fear of Freedom). In the book, Fromm explores humanity's shifting relationship with freedom, how individual freedom can cause fear, anxiety and alienation, and how many people seek relief by relinquishing freedom. He describes how authoritarianism can be a mechanism of escape, with special emphasis on the psychosocial conditions that enabled the rise of Nazism.

note: The Country of the Blind, by H.G. Wells (1904)