quote:There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrong and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal.
Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it safely in the casket or coffin of your own selfishness, but in the casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless- it will become unbreakable, impenetratable, irredeemable, the alternative to tradgedy is damnation.
The only safe place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbation of love is hell. I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God's will than a self invited and self protective lovelessness.
We shall draw nearer to God not by avoiding the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if he choses this as a way in which they should break, so be it.
Dagnabbit. I really like that, although it's a bit of a rebuke. You can tell that it's spring in that I'm even considering it. Hmm...
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posted
I'd agree, but I'd never look at love that way, too depressing. Everything right brings pain, it's not unique to love, everything wrong comes with its sorrows too, there's no escaping hardship, even death is not the sweet release many a poet likes to envision. Perhaps we can choose our pain, be eschewing love we ensure no sudden, heart-wrenching drops, but pick, instead, a lonely life of constant unhappieness; there is no way to free ourselves from hurt, not until we walk our paths to their finish, and then we have what we brought.
posted
I have to say the pain is less painful when your heart is really open, though... it's the getting your heart really open that hurts. Elsewhere (another book) he notes that Christians pray to have contrite hearts without realizing that the root word for "contrite" means "pulverized".
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posted
That seems to be the negative version of one of my favorite songs (my dad sang it at our ring ceremony), the very positive "Give Yourself to Love" by Kate Wolf:
Kind friends all gathered 'round, there's something I would say; What brings us together here has blessed us all today. Love has made a circle that holds us all inside, Where strangers are as family, and loneliness can't hide.
(Chorus)
So give yourself to love, If love is what you're after. Open up your hearts to The tears and laughter, and Give yourself to love, give yourself to love.
I've walked these mountains in the rain, I've learned to love the wind, I've been up before the sunrise to watch the day begin. I always knew I'd find you, though I never did know how, But like sunshine on a cloudy day, you stand before me now.
(chorus)
Love is born in fire, it's planted like a seed, Love can't give you everything, but it gives you what you need. Love comes when you are ready, love comes when you're afraid, It'll be your greatest teacher, the best friend you have made.
posted
The following is a true love song for that character:
quote:You see in all my life I’ve never found What I couldn’t resist, what I couldn’t turn down I could walk away from anyone I ever knew But I can’t walk away from you.
I have never let anything have this much control over me I work too hard to call my life my own And I’ve made myself a world and it’s worked so perfectly But it’s your world now, I can’t refuse I’ve never had so much to lose Oh, I’m shameless.
I'm not sure what you mean by that... it's been too long since I've seen "Heat" or listened to Garth Brooks or Billy Joel. Could you elaborate?
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Ah..well, I think that happens more often than not. I mean, if you start something with an eye on the exit, I think you'll go through exit eventually.
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posted
Edit: Actually, I'm wrong, it's Robert de Niro's character, not Al Pacino.
Spoilers for Heat ahead!
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...yeah. And then he dies.
He wasn't expecting to meet the girl in the movie. And there's a long moment when you think he's going to give up his villainous ways and leave with her, but then...
posted
If you don't bet, you can't win. -- Robert Heinlein
I think he also said something about betting big with a huge smile.
Personally, I think being pregnant is a little like that, especially at the beginning. It's fear that you've laid *everything* on the table, and even though this little person isn't even the size of a peanut yet, your heart is gone for this little someone you don't even know, who might turn out to be the 2nd Unibomber, but you can't help it, you just love them with a love that surpasses everything else you've ever felt before. It's fear that you'll never measure up to the obligation it represents, and a quieter fear, so quiet it barely whispers, that you won't like this kid (yet love) once you get to know him. You know, deep down, that you've bet big, about as big as you can, and though the smile might be a bit tremulous, it's there and it grows a little every day.
And to some degree, I think a wedding day is like that too, betting big with a big smile. You're pretty sure this is the right thing, but there are always tiny doubts -- usually self-doubt -- but when you talk to your feet and ask them if it's time to run (out the door) or time to walk (down the aisle), your feet are remarkably laid back. They know.
All of which sounds romantic, but it seems to me that love isn't the least bit romantic. There are romantic points, but the protein of the relationship is anchored in stuff that is very unromantic.
While I think that quote is an admonition to get out there, risk your heart on love, I think it's worthwhile to assess risk tolerances. Like with financial investments, do you have a high risk tolerance, or are you more conservative? Basically, there may be really good reason why your risk tolerance is where it is. What you have to assess is, is your risk tolerance going to keep you from acheiving your investment goals? (at the risk of carrying a metaphor too far) (And by "investment goals", I only mean loving others, *not* being loved in return or being married by age 25 or other things outside your control.)
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posted
That's interesting. I am very, very risk averse. I am up for anything, but I cover my bases first. I blow my money on travel and books and causes, but I save 15% of my income first. I used to date for adventure (before I figured out that was a bad idea), but I never got very serious. I'll go anywhere, but rarely, rarely (almost never?) put all of me there. When I do, I've thought about it for ages ahead of time. By the time I do it, I've thought about it for so long it's like it's already happened in my head - the act itself is a mere formality. I'm already changed.
This does not go well with the Mormon tendency to date and commit quickly, before you really know what's happening. I don't like not knowing what I'm getting into - my first response to a new situation is to research far and wide. In addition, I'm hard to hold on to - someone trying to clasp on usually makes me bolt. That holds true even in minor situations. I made a new friend a few weeks ago, and then at a party last week, she stayed near me most of the night. I was going stir-crazy, but she wasn't being annoying. I just can't handle it - I usually sit at church by myself on purpose. On the other hand, I deeply love it when I have a place or a friend or a person that I know and love and trust well that I can go when I don't want to be lonely. I don't know. I figure I'm doing my best, being good, and am certainly happy, so everything's fine.
The quote is intriguing for two reasons: the first is that I've tried...to do the love thing with my fingers crossed, just in case. To no one's surprise, it didn't work. Dagnabbit.
The second is that the quote was e-mailed to me. Spooky. Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God's will than a self invited and self protective lovelessness.
I have a problem with. That would seem to place harmful perversions on a higher plane than turning inward away from contact with a society one can't help but harm.
Frankly, I'd prefer the members of NAMBLA (for example) turn inward for gratification...
but other than that, I think the quotation is fairly insightful.
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posted
I think if C.S. Lewis lived in a reality that included the possibilities of people like NAMBLA members being part of his world view, he would have been far more overwhelmed than he was with a slight lifelong hesitancy to form romantic relationships.
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posted
Actually, NAMBLA is my favorite example of why social relativism doesn't work and how projecting a social policy to it's ridiculous extreme sometimes isn't ridiculous enough. Seriously, if you've ever had the misfortune to read their literature justifying their prediliction towards sex with young boys, it's a real eye opener. At least for me I had the experience of several times thinking "well, yes, you'd have a point except...they're little kids."
Oh well. Didn't mean to derail the thread.
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posted
Here's one of the most piercing exchanges about love that I've ever heard:
Kitty: Have you ever been in love?
Desire: You might say that.
Kitty: Horrible, isn't it?
Desire: In what way?
Kitty: It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...
You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.
Love takes you hostage. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart.
Desire: How picturesque.
Kitty: It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real-gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart-pain.
posted
Lewis did exist in that reality... one of his good friends was a pedophile and Lewis and he communicated regularly about the personal sexual predilictions they struggled to avoid (Lewis, himself, was apparently a Masochist). To be clear, the man didn't "act out", but was simply particularly sexually attracted to young boys.
However I don't think either of them would have had the audacity to characterize that attraction as "love"... and that's why and where I think Lewis would begin his argument to refute you, Bob. In the book the quote is from (The Four Loves if anyone is interested) he draws a sharp distinction between sexual love and mere sexual appetite. I think he would consider gay sex between adults to fall within the bounds of his quote, and NAMBLA to fall out, for the reason that such a predatory relationship cannot (in his view) possibly involve love.
Hopefully, that makes sense?
Back to Heat and Billy Joel...
I think that "What I couldn't resist, what I couldn't turn down" is not something you love. I spent a great deal of time and money in therapy teaching myself that you have to be able to say "no" before you can say "yes." Love, IMO, should not be passive, but active... a choice and a gift, emphatically not an addiction, which is what I associate with those words above. The song contiues about how love has control over him... and to me that is a weakness in love, not a strength.
The nearest parallel I can think of is, ironically, proper punching. You might think that an off balance, leaning in to your opponent punch, is more powerful, but it isn't. You do want to shift your weight into your opponent, but under your control and with deliberation. If you are off balance, it is usually because your punch is pulling you forward and, consequently, your body is pulling back on the punch, causing a loss of power. Properly controlled, balanced transfer of your weight, however, produces a tremendously forceful pucnh, without a huge wind up or haymaker delivery.
Love is, I think, the same way. true power is in control and balance... not in unbalancing yourself in a vain effort to "give your all."
posted
Bob, I have no doubt that NAMBLA and its accompanying horrors did not even cross Lewis' mind when he wrote that.
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