Sunday, July 18, 2004
A world without love isn't worth living in
There are many kinds of love. There is love of the divine. There is mystical love, which makes physical existence itself a quest for the divine. There is the love of mankind which saints and socialists excel in.
Although it is far smaller than the world, the family is a precious arena in which love for parents, children and siblings can flourish.
There is unconditional love, which is very difficult to give. There is unrequited love, which is very easy to win.
Platonic love is a meeting of minds that have abjured the ecstasies promised by physical desire. Truly erotic love elevates physical passion into an act of mind.
Imagine the world without these, and other varieties of love. I cannot.
Nor can I run away from their complications.
There was a time when it was possible to believe that there was no love greater than the look in a mother's eyes as she breast-fed her baby. Her love was worth more than the philosophy of Aristotle, the plays of Shakespeare, the poetry of Dante and the discoveries of Einstein combined.
But life is not simple. How should the mother respond were her baby to grow up to be a serial killer? If he were to confess his murders to her, should she turn him in to the police because of her love of justice, or should she try to protect him because he is still the human whom she breast-fed once?
Or what if, in another scenario, the mother turned into an ogre where her daughter-in-law was concerned? Should her son's love for her permit him to be an accomplice in the injury of his wife?
I have tried to get away from such questions by investing my hopes in these words of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke: 'Is not the secret purpose/ of this sly Earth, in urging a pair of lovers,/ just to make everything leap with ecstasy in them?...
'Here is the time for the Tellable, here is its home./ Speak and proclaim.'
But proclaim what? Consider that familiar question which one young person asks another: 'Will you love me like this always?'
The honest answer must be: 'Of course not, because you will not be like this always. You will become fat and ugly, and talk more about the rottenness of onions or the price of fish than reach out for me, a travelling cloud in the only sky that I care to pass through: You.'
That honest answer may result in a swift parting of ways between now and always.
The thought made me cynical. I was incensed particularly by the horrible, possibly bourgeois, euphemism for sex called 'making love'. My anger turned to sarcasm when I heard of the fictional aristocrat who made love to the maid but who was scandalised when she tried to kiss him after the act.
Kissing was no doubt a frightening reminder of the loving role of spontaneity in relations among the classes, along with the sexes.
That is why, I think, 'making love' should be ditched for the word 'sexing'. Hence, a description of a night of married bliss would go like this: 'He sexed her and she sexed him. Sexhausted, they fell asleep. But dutifully as ever, they woke up in the morning to have breakfast with her sex-in-laws.'
Life moves on.
Cynicism is the prerogative of the young, understanding the duty of the old. In the Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer's book, In My Father's Court, the son asks: 'Father, what is love?'
His father replies: 'See, I love you because you are my child. But who created you? The Creator of the Universe. If I love you, obviously I must love the Creator, for without Him neither you nor I would exist.'
The boy goes out to play, but he cannot forget his father's words. In his thoughts reverberates the realisation that 'we are all the children of God... There are Divine sparks even in the mud'.
And there are sparks in concrete driveways, too. On one such driveway, one early evening, I was waylaid by a fraternity of fallen leaves. They were in a perfect circle of movement, engrossed in themselves as they chased one another, round and round, with inexhaustible glee.
The reason was, of course, the breeze, but what love had made it blow their way? Was God Himself at play?
I was terrified that a car would come along and scatter the fallen leaves away from behaving like children. None did. Yet, because I did not want to wait to see how the leaves ended their chase, I moved on.
But there is no escape from a world where the need to love is as great as the need to be loved.
Although it is far smaller than the world, the family is a precious arena in which love for parents, children and siblings can flourish.
There is unconditional love, which is very difficult to give. There is unrequited love, which is very easy to win.
Platonic love is a meeting of minds that have abjured the ecstasies promised by physical desire. Truly erotic love elevates physical passion into an act of mind.
Imagine the world without these, and other varieties of love. I cannot.
Nor can I run away from their complications.
There was a time when it was possible to believe that there was no love greater than the look in a mother's eyes as she breast-fed her baby. Her love was worth more than the philosophy of Aristotle, the plays of Shakespeare, the poetry of Dante and the discoveries of Einstein combined.
But life is not simple. How should the mother respond were her baby to grow up to be a serial killer? If he were to confess his murders to her, should she turn him in to the police because of her love of justice, or should she try to protect him because he is still the human whom she breast-fed once?
Or what if, in another scenario, the mother turned into an ogre where her daughter-in-law was concerned? Should her son's love for her permit him to be an accomplice in the injury of his wife?
I have tried to get away from such questions by investing my hopes in these words of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke: 'Is not the secret purpose/ of this sly Earth, in urging a pair of lovers,/ just to make everything leap with ecstasy in them?...
'Here is the time for the Tellable, here is its home./ Speak and proclaim.'
But proclaim what? Consider that familiar question which one young person asks another: 'Will you love me like this always?'
The honest answer must be: 'Of course not, because you will not be like this always. You will become fat and ugly, and talk more about the rottenness of onions or the price of fish than reach out for me, a travelling cloud in the only sky that I care to pass through: You.'
That honest answer may result in a swift parting of ways between now and always.
The thought made me cynical. I was incensed particularly by the horrible, possibly bourgeois, euphemism for sex called 'making love'. My anger turned to sarcasm when I heard of the fictional aristocrat who made love to the maid but who was scandalised when she tried to kiss him after the act.
Kissing was no doubt a frightening reminder of the loving role of spontaneity in relations among the classes, along with the sexes.
That is why, I think, 'making love' should be ditched for the word 'sexing'. Hence, a description of a night of married bliss would go like this: 'He sexed her and she sexed him. Sexhausted, they fell asleep. But dutifully as ever, they woke up in the morning to have breakfast with her sex-in-laws.'
Life moves on.
Cynicism is the prerogative of the young, understanding the duty of the old. In the Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer's book, In My Father's Court, the son asks: 'Father, what is love?'
His father replies: 'See, I love you because you are my child. But who created you? The Creator of the Universe. If I love you, obviously I must love the Creator, for without Him neither you nor I would exist.'
The boy goes out to play, but he cannot forget his father's words. In his thoughts reverberates the realisation that 'we are all the children of God... There are Divine sparks even in the mud'.
And there are sparks in concrete driveways, too. On one such driveway, one early evening, I was waylaid by a fraternity of fallen leaves. They were in a perfect circle of movement, engrossed in themselves as they chased one another, round and round, with inexhaustible glee.
The reason was, of course, the breeze, but what love had made it blow their way? Was God Himself at play?
I was terrified that a car would come along and scatter the fallen leaves away from behaving like children. None did. Yet, because I did not want to wait to see how the leaves ended their chase, I moved on.
But there is no escape from a world where the need to love is as great as the need to be loved.
