The whole collection · No. 31 of 36

Fromm’s flower

For anyone who collects things.

1976 · To Have or to Be?

Where it comes from

In To Have or to Be? (1976) Erich Fromm sets two poems side by side. Tennyson plucks a flower from a wall to understand it, and it dies in his hand. Bashō looks carefully at one by the hedge, and leaves it growing.

How to play it

Pluck the flower. Or keep still and look at it.

Pick it up

What it teaches (try it first)

Having: nothing counts until you own it. Being: you’re actually there with it. Only one of them leaves the flower alive.

Ask yourself. What are you trying to own that you could simply look at?

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