On Love

      
            I have been thinking lately upon the subject of love. Not romantic love alone, but any kind of love: love you might feel for another person, or for a story that reaches into your soul, or for a cause that you support, or for an idea that you conceived in the dead of night as you tried to sleep. In particular, I've been musing upon the relation of love to pain, and pain to creativity.
            C.S. Lewis once wrote the following:

            "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."

        The idea that love brings pain is not a novel one; most people have discovered this for themselves. But I think that love does not only bring pain. I think that love is a kind of pain in itself, and perhaps it is the only kind of pain. I think that love is the desire for a deeper connection with a person or thing than is humanly possible. It is never enough to rest in the existence of a thing that we love. We must always be trying to interact with that thing, to somehow become a part of it or make it a part of us. But there will never be a connection deep enough to satisfy. When we love something, we are constantly working for it, even if the goal has already been reached. For example, when you love someone, you don't stop trying to please and care for that person after you've found out that your love is returned. On the contrary, you try harder than ever. 
          If this desire for a perfect connection is love, then it is easy to understand why the most creative minds are often the most pained. People create because they are in love. They are in love with ideas which they want to bring to life. The trouble is that this desire is so, so strong that it will never be satisfied. First of all, reality can never live up to imagination, because the former is limited while the latter is limitless. Therefore, the creator will more than likely not be able to produce with his feeble human powers the magnificent idea that dwells inside him. Second, even if this creator does manage to produce exactly what he was thinking of, the people who have the power to distribute or display the creator's idea will more than likely require a few changes to be made. That is, if it the idea is even accepted at all. Third, supposing that the creation miraculously manages to reach the outside world without alteration, it will certainly face either indifference or criticism from other others. But even in the very rare case that the stars align, and none of these misfortunes occur, and the idea is expertly executed and becomes famous and well-loved, this will still be insufficient. The level of unity that the creator is trying to attain with his beloved idea can never be reached.
         Perhaps I speak from personal experience here. Perhaps this is not a general definition of love, but only love as I feel it. I cannot help but think there must be some truth to it, however, because I have never encountered a person who is willing to rest in the existence of a thing he or she loves. If people loved in this way, I think that no one would ever do anything worth doing. What would be the point, if we were able to be completely satisfied by the mere existence of things? Why should an artist paint the images in his head, if he is content to think of them? Why should a scientist try to publish her research, if she is content that her theories are correct? Why should lovers want to marry, if they are content to have met each other?
         I am not really certain what I mean by all of this. These are merely some things I have been pondering, and you can take them or leave them as you please. I suppose I would like to encourage all of you who love something very much to keep loving it, and keep pursuing it. People often like to laugh at those who love something, because they view this as a weakness. They will tell you that the things you love are silly, that it is foolish to invest yourself in things that aren't real or profitable, that you should never give your heart to someone else until you are certain that they love you back. They will make fun of the things you love, because they think it is funny to watch you get upset over it. They will make you feel foolish for doing what is most natural and most human and most noble. But if you follow their advice, what is left of life? What is there worth living for? Money? Cheap comforts? Recreation?

        I leave you with an excerpt from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. This occurs as a passionate architect is overseeing the construction of one of his designs:

       "An open car drove by, fleeing into the country. The car was overfilled with people bound for a picnic. There was a jumble of bright sweaters, and scarfs fluttering in the wind; a jumble of voices shrieking without purpose over the roar of the motor, and overstressed hiccoughs of laughter; a girl sat sidewise, her legs flung over the side of the car; she wore a man's straw hat slipping down to her nose and she yanked savagely at the strings of a ukelele, ejecting raucous sounds, yelling, "Hey!" These people were enjoying a day of their existence; they were shrieking to the sky their release from the work and the burdens of the days behind them; they had worked and carried the burdens in order to reach a goal-- and this was their goal.
       "He looked at the car as it streaked past. He thought that there was a difference, some important difference, between the consciousness of this day in him and in them. He thought that he should try to grasp it. But he forgot. He was looking at a truck panting up the hill, loaded with a glittering mound of granite."
 





          

Edward Ferrars's Playlist

        I am forced to admit to you that I an an ardent admirer of Jane Austen. I hesitate, of course, because she is such a popular author among young women, particularly young English majors. I do genuinely appreciate Jane Austen as a witty writer with well-developed characters, but I think that when there are t-shirts that say, "I love Mr. Darcy," and infinity scarves that have excerpts from Pride and Prejudice printed on them, things have gotten out of hand.
        I think that, perhaps, one of my favourite novels by Jane Austen is Sense and Sensibility. Though the title does make it sound a bit like a highly moralistic bubble-gum romance, it is one of her darker novels. It also contains my favourite of all Austen heroes, Edward Ferrars. Upon first reading this novel, I actually despised him, because I felt that he had no backbone. Reading parts of it over again as an adult, I find that I understand him far more than I did before. 
        Last summer, I tried re-reading Sense and Sensibility. I didn't get through the whole thing, because I was trying to read too many things at once, but I started making some interesting comparisons between characters in the novel and people you might see today. To be exact, I began re-imagining Sense and Sensibility as occuring in the early to mid 2000s. Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters would belong to a slightly eclectic group of people you might find working in craft or bead stores and burning incense in the living room and listening to New Age music. Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood would be successful professionals. And Edward, I've decided, would listen to emo music.
         I don't know that I would classify Edward as an emo himself. Edward Ferrars is far too fond of being comfortable to adopt any alternative lifestyle or embrace any fashion from a subculture. I think, however, many of the lyrics you might find in songs labeled "emo" or even "punk rock" from the 90s to the 2000s would particularly resonate with his circumstances and feelings in the novel. Edward Ferrars struggles with not being understood or accepted by his family while forced to depend on them. He has low self-esteem, both because he is socially awkward and because he has no purpose in life. He is also trapped in a relationship that he no longer wants, while falling in love with a girl that, even if he broke off the other relationship, he still might not be able to have. I think that a lot of emo songs deal with these types of problems, or similar ones. Though Edward is not known for appreciation of music in the novel, I think he would be attracted to some emo and lighter punk rock songs because of their lyrical content. He wouldn't be the type of person to worship underground punk bands and pride himself on keeping up with the latest in alternative music, but he would probably quietly hum Green Day in the corner of the room at a party. He might compile a nice list of songs that stay on the less edgy, more mainstream side of emo, and listen to them when he's feeling down.
         A month or two ago, I entered into the subject of Jane Austen with a lovely friend of mine. As we compared our favourite novels, I mentioned to her my vision of Edward Ferrars. We decided that we should make playlists for our favourite Austen characters of music that they might listen to if they lived in the present day. Here is a short one that I compiled for Edward.


                                                             Edward Ferrars's Playlist

                                              "Sugar, We're Going Down"- Fall Out Boy
                                        "Wake Me Up When September Ends"- Green Day
                                             "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"- Green Day
                                                             "Longview"- Green Day
                                                               "21 Guns"- Green Day
                                                              "I Miss You"- Blink 182
                                                 "To the End"- My Chemical Romance
                                "The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You"- My Chemical Romance
                                                 "I'm Not Okay"- My Chemical Romance
                                             "I Don't Love You"- My Chemical Romance
                                                     "The Calendar"- Panic! At the Disco
                                          "The Ballad of Mona Lisa"- Panic! At the Disco