December 16 2009, Sainte Adèle
Revised Sept 13 2010
Here I sit in my house alone. It is so quiet and peaceful. A cold winter night a week before Christmas, going down to -20, but a warm fire in the woodstove, the light from the lamps a reddish gold on the hardwood floors and the cedar-panelled walls. It is so quiet and warm and beautiful in my house. I have had supper and am sipping a hot expresso allongé in this ancient rustic home-made armchair. And I am on holidays - in short, what more could a person need or desire?The answer to that, of course, is the company of people he likes or loves.
How much time in a person's life is spent feeling, and thinking about, the pang and sway and force of love, and of pondering the person or people we love and by whom we crave to feel loved in return? In other words, why is love so terribly important to us?
It is not the only thing that is so very important to us. We could give a few examples but maybe the most obvious one is food. We absolutely have to have food, each and every one of us does. Without it one cannot even subsist - you have to have food or you die. Even a person being fed intravenously is still receiving a kind of physical nourishment.
And in spite of that great importance, many of us do not even appreciate food; we don't even come close to realizing its value and importance. Or rather sometimes we do - in general, we realize the value of food when we don't have it, or when we still vividly recall not having had it in the past. And when we habituate to having ample food all the time, well then we forget its value, which does not prevent us from indulging in it even to the point of self-abuse.
What then of love? If a person has no love does he die?
I'm not sure I absolutely know the answer to that question. Some die, certainly. But maybe some can subsist indefinitely, even if only in an apathetic twilight existence? And if one can survive, can he possibly be healthy and happy, without love?
One reason that it is difficult to answer the question is that it is hard to know when or if a person is really living without love - and I mean no love at all. For if a person lives alone, unmarried, no girlfriend or boyfriend, not even a secret admirer or a secretly admired - well none of that prove that he or she is living without love. For maybe his parents love him, or an aunt or uncle loves him, or he has an old friend, or maybe there is a dog who he meets on the corner on the way to the grocery store, who loves him.
Well then, you might think, I am using the word love in quite a general sense, including not only the love of a spouse or lover, but that of parents, and relatives, and even of dogs. And yes I am including all those kinds of love.
Why? Because they are all examples of true and real love - for even the love of a dog for a person is not called love only by analogy - rather it is very real and true love. In my opinion, a person who doesn't know that is a person who doesn't know much about dogs!
Romantic love is far from being the only kind of love or even necessarily the quintessential kind; on the contrary, it may be that much of what we call romantic love is not even love at all.
Okay, so what would it be for a person to live with no love, no love at all?
When I try to answer that, a distinction keeps popping up in my mind, as if the distinction itself were urging me to notice it. Are we talking about a person being loved by others, about him loving others, or about both? Important question!
Maybe a person can continue to live without loving anyone, as long as he is loved by someone? Or maybe a person can continue to live without being loved by anyone, as long as he loves someone? Hard questions!
Or maybe those are both true - so that a person can continue to live as long as either he is loved by at least one person (or animal), or loves at least one person?
Some say that in order for a person to continue living he must have at least a little bit of will or desire to live, and that if this will or desire is completely extinguished, he dies - not because he forcefully intervenes and commits suicide - rather he simply and spontaneously dies. As an example of this, sometimes after a couple has lived together many years, if one of them dies, sometimes the other is very soon to follow. We have all heard of such cases, or maybe you knew someone personally.
Can one maintain a will or desire to live, if he is loved by no one and loves no one, not even a dog or cat, not even a goldfish?
There are legends of some saints or mystics, past or present, who were able to live indefinitely without taking any kind of food - it is said they only drank water or tea or whatever. Some would doubt these stories, saying it is not true that the person was taking no nourishment at all - he, or she, was surely at least drinking fruit juice, or if only tea, there might be traces of nutrients in the tea.
A saint living only on juice or tea is like a person living only on the love of a dog who he passes on the street by chance once in several weeks. These are two kinds of extreme fasting.
You might ask yourself, whether alarmed or amused - surely he isn't alluding to himself? He isn't being autobiographical!?
The answer to that is no; I have not been alluding to myself.
It is true I am unmarried and have no companion; but my similarity with the loveless person we've depicted ends there. Some people who know me but not very well might not believe this - but my life is steeped in love. Love received from others, first and foremost from my parents and family, then from my few close friends, but also from other people who are more or less close to me, often less than more, if only because of my reticence and self-imposed reclusion.
And love that I feel for others, not always given but felt at least (another distinction urging to be heard! But for now it will have to wait…) - whether strong, intense love or the far quieter sort that is respect and good will, towards co-workers, friendly acquaintances etc.
In fact I am just like many of us : so much love in my life, whether quiet and subtle or forceful and strong, and it's been that way for so long, that I lose appreciation and the sense of its value, exactly, but exactly, as we tend to do with food if we have it all the time. And exactly as we do with the air that always surrounds us and touches us on all sides and that we absolutely need to breathe - we forget it's even there!
And the fact that I always have love may be the explanation for my not knowing the answer to the question of whether or not a person can continue to live without it. If I ever find myself entirely deprived of love, I may well learn it then - though the lesson might cost me my life.
But I have a feeling that it is a lesson I may never be forced to learn in my lifetime, at least not in that setting. And for that I feel very, very grateful. Let me learn the lesson more gently please.