Why Love?

[matriarch]

A quotation from C S Lewis, (Shadowlands), after his wife died of cancer. They were married at her bedside, knowing she had terminal cancer, and very little time left. She died 3 years later.

"Why love, if losing hurts so much?
The happiness then, is part of the suffering now.
That's the deal."

Discuss.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Amen.

Used to think of it nearly every day when I worked at the animal shelter. The people who were really torn up when bringing pets to be given their last injection, or to have their bodies cremated, were the ones who loved the deepest.

I'll add to C. S. Lewis Oscar Wilde: "Everything must be paid for." And - "A sentimentalist is merely a cynic on summer's holiday. A sentimentalist wants all of the joys of a great emotion without paying anything for them."

Nothing good is free. That, to me, is a comfort even in grief - that I could not grieve strongly, if I had not loved strongly.

 

[Guest]

I've always valued Jeannette Winterson's phrase from her book Written on the Body: "The measure of love is loss."

It's true and I've paid heavily but it was worth it. Valuable consolation came once from a friend who told me I wouldn't be in such pain if I hadn't known such happiness.

Perdita

 

[matriarch]

I would add.

It is impossible to say you have loved - deeply - if you have not felt pain.

Not to say that loving will hurt, more that, at some point, there will be pain.
The pain of loss, of losing that love, in whatever form it comes to you.

If you try to shield yourself from pain, you will also shield yourself from love. Your life would be one devoid of any feelings whatsover. A mere existence.

I would rather a brief moment in time, loving and being loved deeply, truly, completely, and endure the pain that comes with losing that love, than to have gone through my life and NEVER felt the bliss, the ecstasy, the immeasurable joy that love brought to my life.

 

[matriarch]

I've always valued Jeannette Winterson's phrase from her book Written on the Body: "The measure of love is loss."

It's true and I've paid heavily but it was worth it. Valuable consolation came once from a friend who told me I wouldn't be in such pain if I hadn't known such happiness.

Perdita

 

[carsonshepherd]

used to go to a support group for friends/family of people with HIV/AIDS and I remember learning that lesson so vividly, that we all pay a price for love...

 

[Selena_Kitt]

It's all love.

 

[BlackShanglan]

*nods*

Higher price for trying to hide from it, though.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

from Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950), published in 1916:

"George Gray"

I HAVE studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me—
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire—
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

 

[rgraham666]

*nods*

Higher price for trying to hide from it, though.

Tell me about it.

Nothing worse than giving up on love.

 

[Weepingguitar]

I had an acting professor tell me and a group of my peers (all between the ages of 19 and 25) that we were to young to be good actors because we were too young to have experienced any true pain or true joy in our lives.

Half of me just wanted to burst into tears when he said that, because of such a harsh pre-judgement. In that group there were victims of child molestation, rape, loss of loved ones, and people disowned by their families for being gay. There were also couples who are now married with children. Even several years later now, that same professor would probably say we were too young. I wish I would have had the courage then to ask just one person in the group to tell their story.

I wonder what he would have said.

 

[Norajane]

Why love? Do we really have a choice? Is it possible not to love?

 

[Harry Leg]

Why love? Do we really have a choice? Is it possible not to love?

I think its possible to hide from love. Its possible to fear it so much that you avoid it. But this is not really living. I think as you are towards love you are towards life. I'll love as much and as deeply as I can and run head long into it even though the pain can be equally intense. To me that is really living. If you don't know pain how can you know pleasure. One defines the other. They are inextricably linked.
JMHO

 

[McKenna]

Wow. Powerful stuff being shared here. Thank you, Mat, for posting such a thought-provoking thread. I needed to read this stuff more than I'd care to admit.

.....that I could not grieve strongly, if I had not loved strongly.

I especially needed to be reminded of this.

It makes me think that it would be a disservice to ourselves to ignore the grief or try to make less of it, because in so doing we also minimize the love we once felt, too. And love, for its own sake, is a beautiful thing; why disrespect that.

 

[Liar]

That's why they call it falling in love. You don't merrily jump in love. (Although some jump merrily while in love, but that's more of a side effect.) It's not like there's all that much of a chioce. There might be the choice NOT to, by carefully avoiding any unfamiliar terrain. But in my experience, it has an tendency to sneak up on the most watchful too.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Roxanne, thanks for the reminder of Masters. That collection is an old favorite of mine too. I think Lucinda Matlock's comments a good reprisal to George Gray:

I WENT to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed—
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you—
It takes life to love Life.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I think its possible to hide from love. Its possible to fear it so much that you avoid it. But this is not really living. I think as you are towards love you are towards life. I'll love as much and as deeply as I can and run head long into it even though the pain can be equally intense. To me that is really living. If you don't know pain how can you know pleasure. One defines the other. They are inextricably linked.
JMHO

Good man!

 

[Belegon]

Why love? Do we really have a choice? Is it possible not to love?

Not for me...

...but I think it is for some. For those unlucky few, the greatest motivator seems to be fear. Fear of loss, fear of being out of control, fear of the unknown. They keep everyone at arm's distance and everything in their lives tightly in check. By seeking to have it all and control it all, they have nothing.

I've been hurt of course...and I will be again. But the price is gladly paid. I would give up a thousand careful conversations for a few passionate words that just can't not be said...

 

[impressive]

.....

 

[rgraham666]

For some of us, love, pain and fear are pretty much synonymous, so it's hard for us to get close enough to love somebody. And we are going to tend to withdraw when we do fall in love.

Maybe if I'd had more reward than punishment from those I loved, I'd be more eager.

 

[Guest]

why love?
why not?
a question bandied about by philosophers through the ages.
and so it goes...through the depths of feeling comes the breath of existance. that is all the proof i need.
love is.

 

[woodnymph_O]

someone told me along time ago,
we fall in love with a romantic, wonderful person. Then we spend years trying to find that feeling again, waiting for them to become that perfect person again, and the sad part is they never were. Falling in love with the same person more than once is the hard part. Can you fall in love with the real person, or just the facade of perfection they had shown you at first?

Yes love hurts, thats part of how you know it's love. Would you know you were in love if the absence of the person you love did not hurt, or leave an empty spot?
Deep stuff mat
Nymphy

 

[Nirvanadragones]

Katharine Lee Bates: Yellow Clover

Must I, who walk alone,
Come on it still,
This Puck of plants
The wise would do away with,
The sunshine slants
To play with,
Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover,
Which once in parting for a time
That then seemed long,
Ere time for you was over,
We sealed our own?
Do you remember yet,
O Soul beyond the stars,
Beyond the uttermost dim bars
Of space,
Dear Soul who found the earth sweet,
Remember by love's grace,
In dreamy hushes of heavenly song,
How suddenly we halted in our climb,
Lingering, reluctant, up that farthest hill,
Stooped for the blossoms closest to our feet,
And gave them as a token
Each to each,
In lieu of speech,
In lieu of words too grievous to be spoken,
Those little, gypsy, wondering blossoms wet
With a strange dew of tears?

So it began,
This vagabond, unvalued yellow clover,
To be our tenderest language. All the years
It lent a new zest to the summer hours,
As each of us went scheming to surprise
The other with our homely, laureate flowers,
Sonnets and odes,
Fringing our daily roads.
Can amaranth and asphodel
Bring merrier laughter to your eyes?
Oh, if the Blest, in their serene abodes,
Keep any wistful consciousness of earth,
Not grandeurs, but the childish ways of love,
Simplicities of mirth,
Must follow them above
With touches of vague homesickness that pass
Like shadows of swift birds across the grass.
How oft, beneath some foreign arch of sky,
The rover,
You or I,
For life oft sundered look from look,
And voice from voice, the transient dearth
Schooling my soul to brook
This distance that no messages may span,
Would chance
Upon our wilding by a lonely well,
Or drowsy watermill,
Or swaying to the chime of convent bell,
Or where the nightingales of old romance
With tragical contraltos fill
Dim solitudes of infinite desire;
And once I joyed to meet
Our peasant gadabout
A trespasser on trim, seigniorial seat,
Twinkling a sauce eye
As potentates paced by.

Our golden cord! our soft, pursuing flame
From friendship's altar fire!
How proudly we would pluck and tame
The dimpling clusters, mutinously gay!
How swiftly they were sent
Far, far away
On journeys wide
By sea and continent,
Green miles and blue leagues over,
From each of us to each,
That so our hearts might reach
And touch within the yellow clover,
Love's letter to be glad about
Like sunshine when it came!

My sorrow asks no healing; it is love;
Let love then make me brave
To bear the keen hurts of
This careless summertide,
Ay, of our own poor flower,
Changed with our fatal hour,
For all its sunshine vanished when you died.
Only white cover blossoms on your grave.


After Katharine Coman’s death, Bates wrote to a friend "So much of me died with Katharine Coman that I'm sometimes not quite sure whether I'm alive or not."

 

[Nirvanadragones]

Thank you for the thread Matriarch

I've always valued Jeannette Winterson's phrase from her book Written on the Body: "The measure of love is loss."

It's true and I've paid heavily but it was worth it. Valuable consolation came once from a friend who told me I wouldn't be in such pain if I hadn't known such happiness.

Perdita

Thoughts on and about this thread has been going through my head all morning. Isn't it strange how at times we "put a certain theme to bed" and then all of a sudden it surfaces profoundly? You get the same message via different means from different avenues... bombarded by it all of a sudden. It's all good. Only good can come of it I believe.

Yet, sometimes everything is too silent, and you recall being numb with the shock of reality. You replay those anguishes moments over and over. And although you known there is nothing that you can do, (It has happened/ is about to happen/ will happen/ its inevitable.) you still feel that you are drawn into a tunnel of memories that you’d rather not be drawn into. And yet, within sitting with that pain, you know for you to live fully, you have to love fully. And with love, comes loss.

We fight pain. We fight tears and sorrow. Instead of loosing ourselves to grief, we want to stand tall and be strong. I believe that by allowing ourselves to feel that pain, we are being strong. And healing can start.

Winterson: The PowerBook “All of one’s life is a struggle towards . . . the narrow path between freedom and belonging…. And life moves forward on the tug of war between the world I inherit and the world I invent…. Too much danger, love implodes; too much safety, passion withers….. There is no love that does not pierce the hands and feet,”

 

[Selena_Kitt]

You're either doing love, or you're doing fear. There is nothing else.