This month, we’re walking you through the Eight Rules of The School of Life: our manifesto for a happier, kinder, and more fulfilling way of living. | | | ‘The one’ is a cruel invention. No-one is ever wholly ‘right’ nor indeed wholly wrong. True love isn’t merely an admiration for strength, it is patience and compassion for our mutual weaknesses. Love is a capacity to bring imagination to bear on a person’s less impressive moments - and to bestow an ongoing degree of forgiveness for natural fragility. No one should be expected to love us ‘just as we are’. Learning and developing are at the core of love. Genuine love involves two people helping each other to become the best version of themselves. Compatibility isn’t a prerequisite for love; it is the achievement of love. This article is free to read. | | | Most of us think we know what love is; we may just be looking for the right person to lavish our love on. But it's no insult, and indeed it might even be helpful to imagine, that we don't have much of a clue what love really is, not because we are deficient, but because our culture never investigates the subject as it should. Here is a list of seven ingredients that the School of Life suggests lie at the heart of a proper understanding of love. | | | We might expect that, if we were in any significant way annoyed with our partner, we would naturally and spontaneously notice the matter. | | Beneath all the turmoil and agitation of relationships, two fundamental anxieties stand out, and help to explain our worst antics and sorrows. | | | Exercises to foster understanding, patience, forgiveness, humour and resilience. | | Cards to foster connection and closeness. | | | Follow us on social media: | | | |
