I read Essays in Love by Alain de Botton, recommended by Mara. (Thank you, friend!) And while I read it, I found myself thinking: this isn't how it has to be. This book helped me realize anew that the word "love" can contain a whole galaxy of meanings - and not just I-love-ice-cream vs. I-love-my-Mom - even examples of romantic love can look vastly different and still be love. My experience isn't like the one described, and that's okay. His story is one of "love at first sight," and as I read it, I found myself thinking that it borders on obsession. I don't know that I want love like that. It made both the lover and the beloved quite unattractive at times.
I found the most value in something he said right at the end (pg 202-203):
"The difference could be grouped into categories of mature and immature love. Preferable in almost every way, the philosophy of mature love is marked by an active awareness of the good and bad within each person, it is full of temperance, it resists idealization, it is free of jealousy, masochism, or obsession, it is a form of friendship with a sexual dimension, it is pleasant, peaceful, and reciprocated... Immature love, on the other hand (though it has little to do with age) is a story of chaotic lurching between idealization and disappointment, an unstable state where feelings of ecstasy and beatitude combine with impressions of drowning and fatal nausea, where the sense that one has finally found the answer comes together with the feeling that one has never been so lost. The logical climax of immature (because absolute) love comes in death, symbolic or real."
Many of my food-for-thought questions come out of that paragraph...
- Would the relationship described in the book best be considered mature or immature? Is De Botton describing something less than ideal?
- Do relationships fit exclusively in either one category or the other, or are maturity and immaturity two ends on a continuum, and do most relationships contain a mixture of both?
- Is it the normal pattern for relationships to grow from immature to mature love, or do they tend to remain as they began?
- Is immaturity blame-worthy, or natural and suitable for a time?
- Could the description of mature love also be the description of a lack of love?
1 comment:
i'm so glad someone else has read this book! a friend of mine whom i lent it to didn't enjoy it at all, but i found it very thought-provoking. plus, i love de botton's style. i recently re-picked-up his distillation of proust, and it's just lovely.
plus, it's sincere. and, incidentally, i definitely found that many of his moments in "on love" resonated with me. i'll reread it soon and post thoughts :)
Post a Comment