On Love (Take 2)
so the first time i read this, i crammed it full of little notes. i read it again, re-visiting those notes, and jeez, i've come a long way :) here's what i found share-worthy this time:
7. Silence and clumsiness could perhaps be forgiven as rather pitiful proof of desire. It being easy enough to seduce someone toward whom one feels indifferent, the clumsiest seducers could generously be deemed the most genuine. Not to find the right words may ironically be proof that the right words are meant [if only they could be said].
2. ...But to extend these [existential] questions to things that matter to us, to love for instance, is to raise the frightening possibility that the loved one is but an inner fantasy, with little connection to any objective reality.
3. Doubt is easy when it is not a matter of survival: We are as skeptical as we can afford to be, and it is easiest to be skeptical about things that do not fundamentally sustain us. It is easy to doubt the existence of a table; it is hell to doubt the legitimacy of one's love.
20. ...We could perhaps define maturity--that ever elusive goal--as the ability to give everyone what they deserve when they deserve it, to separate the emotions that belong and should be restricted to oneself from those that should at once be expressed to their initiators, rather than passed on to later and more innocent arrivals.
14. ..."It's nice being able to feel I can hate you like this," Chloe once said to me. "It reassures me that you can take it, that I can tell you to fuck off and you'll throw something at me but stay put." We needed to shout at one another party to see whether or not we could tolerate each other's shouting. We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: Only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.
15. It is easiest to accept happiness when it is brought about through things that one can control, that one has achieved after much effort and reason. But the happiness I had reached with Chloe had not come after deep philosophizing or as a result of any personal achievement. It was simply the outcome of having, by a miracle of divine intervention, found a person whose company was more valuable to me than that of almost anyone else in the world. Such happiness was dangerous precisely because it was so lacking in self-sufficient permanence. It seemed to have been arranged by the gods and was hence accompanied by all the primitive fear of divine retribution.
3. But what does wisdom say about love? Is it something that should be given up completely, like coffee or cigarettes, or is it allowed on occasions, like a glass of wine or a bar of chocolate? Is love directly opposed to everything that wisdom stands for? Do sages lose their heads or only overgrown children?
4. If certain wise thinkers have given a nod of approval to love, they have been careful to draw distinctions between its varieties, in much the way that doctors counsel against mayonnaise, but allow it when it is made with low-cholesterol ingredients. They distinguish the rash love of a Romeo and Juliet from Socrates' contemplative worship of the Good, they contrast the excesses of a Werther with the bloodless brotherly love suggested by Jesus.
7. Silence and clumsiness could perhaps be forgiven as rather pitiful proof of desire. It being easy enough to seduce someone toward whom one feels indifferent, the clumsiest seducers could generously be deemed the most genuine. Not to find the right words may ironically be proof that the right words are meant [if only they could be said].
2. ...But to extend these [existential] questions to things that matter to us, to love for instance, is to raise the frightening possibility that the loved one is but an inner fantasy, with little connection to any objective reality.
3. Doubt is easy when it is not a matter of survival: We are as skeptical as we can afford to be, and it is easiest to be skeptical about things that do not fundamentally sustain us. It is easy to doubt the existence of a table; it is hell to doubt the legitimacy of one's love.
20. ...We could perhaps define maturity--that ever elusive goal--as the ability to give everyone what they deserve when they deserve it, to separate the emotions that belong and should be restricted to oneself from those that should at once be expressed to their initiators, rather than passed on to later and more innocent arrivals.
14. ..."It's nice being able to feel I can hate you like this," Chloe once said to me. "It reassures me that you can take it, that I can tell you to fuck off and you'll throw something at me but stay put." We needed to shout at one another party to see whether or not we could tolerate each other's shouting. We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: Only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.
15. It is easiest to accept happiness when it is brought about through things that one can control, that one has achieved after much effort and reason. But the happiness I had reached with Chloe had not come after deep philosophizing or as a result of any personal achievement. It was simply the outcome of having, by a miracle of divine intervention, found a person whose company was more valuable to me than that of almost anyone else in the world. Such happiness was dangerous precisely because it was so lacking in self-sufficient permanence. It seemed to have been arranged by the gods and was hence accompanied by all the primitive fear of divine retribution.
3. But what does wisdom say about love? Is it something that should be given up completely, like coffee or cigarettes, or is it allowed on occasions, like a glass of wine or a bar of chocolate? Is love directly opposed to everything that wisdom stands for? Do sages lose their heads or only overgrown children?
4. If certain wise thinkers have given a nod of approval to love, they have been careful to draw distinctions between its varieties, in much the way that doctors counsel against mayonnaise, but allow it when it is made with low-cholesterol ingredients. They distinguish the rash love of a Romeo and Juliet from Socrates' contemplative worship of the Good, they contrast the excesses of a Werther with the bloodless brotherly love suggested by Jesus.