🪟 22 - Beyond contentment
🪟 22 - Beyond contentment
Frame & Axiom #22 (Part 5): On romantic love.
Table of contents
PART 1: Where All Begins
PART 2: The Moving Being
PART 3: The Court of Reality
PART 4: The Canvas of Reality
PART 5: The Realm of Others
Beyond contentment
Dear Reader,
I have written at great lengths of being content, but even contentment is not final, for that is to be irreverent to our infinite capacity to go above and beyond — the human passions. Of the passions, the greatest is love. It is the passion of loving that the court of reality has endorsed as a sacred symbol of humanity. As the prodigal son who upon returning to his father’s open embrace is welcomed to a great feast, so the desolate soul born of love, upon returning to love, is welcomed by the initiation of heavenly festivities, many orders more euphoric. But heaven is veiled, and so is love. This mystery my mind has been equally enamoured and dumbfounded by — what is love? What I sense to be so irrational yet so true, yet even here, it seems to lie more in the “so ...” than any words I have made to follow it. Its proclamations are displayed plainly and brightly as day, but its truth elusive as night.
🪟 22 - Beyond contentment
The content soul is like a lake in slumber; its surface a mirror, calm and unmoved, reflecting everything around it. It may persist with a “steady superiority” over great winds, in accordance with Solzhenitsyn’s counsel, but steadiness has little to say of the passions. The object of living effectively lies not necessarily in living as perfectly as possible as it is in living as much as possible, and so it follows that stillness is not an end, but a means from which the hunger of the soul remains to put forward its case. The ultimate test of time too has much to say about an active passiveness. So, perhaps life is not yet complete in mere contentment. Here an observant reader may intuit a play of words, but I would point out that language itself affirms this. Contentment is stillness, peace, quietude. And what denotes the passion of love? Sparks, fire, a wave, force, chaos.
When I am starving, it is the nourishment of food that completes me. When the most basic of bodily requirements are satisfied, the requirements of the soul emerge into the foremost field of concern. What the soul desires is a rich substantiation of its contours and shapes, of which artistic creation is a means — but the process of substantiation is not complete without its being shared with, and enjoyed by, another. Artistic creation may relate typically to the medium of art, but the soul can also be, in fact, wants to be extracted not merely on canvas fabric but through every fibre of being. When my soul is starving, it is the nourishment of undivided expression that completes it. And it is in the passion of love that one’s soul is most wholesomely expressed. Without it, a man remains half a man, a woman half a woman, no matter how content they manage to reassure themselves to be. This is to shed light on the human requirement for love, but now what describes the passion of loving? To illuminate something arising from such great depths is not a simple task, but I will make my attempt.
It’s the thing about love. I harbour a deep appreciation for this expression, for here we examine an object truly ineffable in both its potency and its peculiarity. “Love” resembles motion, as its metaphors enlighten, yet one so elusive that any lengthy illumination of it is a criminal reduction of it, even if it produces vivid and enriching effects, for words are a concrete medium, and concreteness cannot seize love in its turbulence. “Love” is the object furthest from language, yet what it aspires to. Has this not been the single object to allure poets, musicians… artists of all generations and of all mediums thinkable — toiling collectively in hopes of arresting it?
But before I move on, I owe a confession to the reader. I have not been in love, at least, not of the eros category. Not properly. So, when I speak here of romantic love I speak more from my impression of it and less of my immersion in it. Whether this disqualifies my framing is up to the judgement of the reader, as well as time. Yet I have seen, felt, been drawn to fragments of it, and I count myself among the fortunate to have loved and been loved in its various forms, so I still have something substantial to say of the romantic as a phenomenon.
Now to proceed toward pragmatic interests, I wish to somehow ground this (gloriously and frustratingly) ephemeral object, to which end I have observed certain attributes honest to it. Firstly, “loving” seems to lie in the allowance of another to have power over oneself. To want another to realise and requite our sorrow, our joy, our secret desires, the spoken and unspoken truths of our being, represents a deep soulful hunger for a form of surrender. To enter into love, then, is in opening the gates of the heart to the undue influence of another. A man through his actions of desiring appeals to a fellow: enter my life, see me for who I truly am, and be my chief influence! In his opening up, or his being drawn out, his longing will begin to be set in motion, as electrical currents flowing from one carrier to another. His heart, spokesperson for his soul, moves to unveil itself in a progressive immersion, yearning until he is able to convey his being in its totality. I want to pour myself out to you, his heart pleads. But his process of substantiation is not complete without his soul being extracted, shared with, and enjoyed by another. So we hope for our hypothetical man that his longing is requited, and if not, soon enough. One’s frame is prone to losing its sturdiness after one too many defeats. I mentioned previously that Nature’s greatest treasures lie in clarity, in reflecting oneself in another in equal stature, as revealed in a deeply honest conduct. That is precisely the case here. There treasures of community, the riches of love, await most readily in store.
It is in irony then that now I find myself tied into a paradox — for to immerse in such chaotic fervour is at the same time to be thoroughly unwise. In allowing himself to be overtaken by passion he lowers his fortifications, inviting great crashing waves into his dwelling. His fortifications of mind are vanquished to the onslaught of love. Indeed, to love is to indulge a passion in a manner not unlike resentment, except with the latter one must be eternally wary, whereas the former is honourable. As to why that is the case, one may employ a host of reasonable causes, perhaps on developmental or evolutionary grounds, but I wish to avoid unnecessary speculations, and treat it as a pattern of reality — that the court of reality has in its peculiarity opted to hold love in high esteem. Our capacities do appear to be designed for others, wherein one is compelled to assimilation and disallowed prosperity in isolation. Nothing else offered of Nature’s suite delivers so profoundly like the medicine of laughter, the affirmation of a gentle caress, the catharsis of lamenting, even the agony of grief. As fire agitates stillness, so love entrances the merely content. The despairs of living was never meant to be endured alone, as declared by God in the Book of Genesis: “it is not good for man to be alone”. To indulge in the positive affirmations of love, as opposed to its negating forces, is to actualise the fullest state of humanness. Here lies, in the words of Voltaire, “the mutual confidence, the delight of the heart, the enchantment of the soul”.
To love is unwise, but it is a just foolishness. Many a wise man of history have inclined to counsel such as this: if it costs you your peace, it is too expensive. They have forgotten about love. The saying goes, ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread’. The mature soul in love is a mind that dangles from wisdom, from his reliance on good reason, edging to a reliance on his moods. In its ardour rational pleas are drowned out, for while the mature mind wishes to keep itself free from the clutches of his longing (especially toward the unreachable) in the interest of maintaining a “steady superiority” over life, the romantic heart is a rather naïve organ — it believes and yearns. As in the words of G. K. Chesterton, love “brings not peace but a sword". I was content before I knew her. Such superfluous lack of acceptance, and the suppressed reflection that flows with it, is particularly unstoic! In this dichotomy lies a great tragedy, in one body an eternal chasm between heart and mind. The passionate lover driven only to love and in love, a Don Juan, cannot be called wise by any measure of the word. On the contrary, in his sensuality he takes on an eternally immature spirit, one given over completely to his passions with no regard for reflection. Yet he lives beyond contentment, for he is as an engulfing fire resolute on its rampage. I have low regard for such deceitful ferocity as an ultimate ideal, but it is the case that success, true success, tends to lie in the currency of soul, of which love is abundant. Only these things are justly enviable.
Even so, even heavenly passions stand to be interrogated, for everything beautiful has a true and a depraved form. The free man seeks to isolate the fleshliest of desires from its heavenly form, since justness always requires a reaching toward, whereas depravity is always cheaply attainable. A free society indulges its cravings separated from the fullness of love, believing all such things to be trivial — mere additives. They make a grave error. In the undertaking of completing oneself in another, ought dutiful consideration be warranted? Self-completion is not additive. In affixing oneself unconscientiously on deceptive surfaces that disguise as wholeness a man continues to find himself only half a man, a woman half a woman. They are as one who thirsts but remains insistent on trading the wholesomeness of fresh water for drunkenness. What tragedy! A heaven-ordained gift is denigrated to an alluring emptiness. Of all such denigrations I recall an apt critique by Pope John Paul II — its problem not being that it shows too much, but that it shows far too little.
Therefore, contentment is merely a base from which heavenly (just) passions can be served rightly. It is possible to be content as half a man, but can he really say that he has well and truly lived his life? Contentment endows the will to persist, but love subsumes the self, endowing the will to die. To borrow more words from G. K. Chesterton, love is “stronger than oneself and sets its palpable foot on one’s neck”. That love is worthy of martyrdom, a variant of the ultimate test, affirms the justness of its indulgence. Effective communal living by way of love is not so much mere effective communal living, as it is the quintessential image of effective living. The full range of humanness, the deepest sorrows and the greatest jubilance, ‘takes two to tango’. There lies no substitute for a man who seeks to hide, for in his recluse he starves himself of his better half. No, let us not remain merely content. Let us all instead run straight toward infinity — and beyond!
Till next time,
Euwyn