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The Greatness of Loving, in Light of Its Opposites
To love is to say "you will not die"... even when death comes
1. To love is to say to the beloved: “you will not die”
Positive manifestations that reveal the sublimity of the act of loving
In the preceding article I pointed out some joyful consequences that highlight the greatness of the act of loving.
Understood in its deepest essence —he was saying—, to love is to pronounce an unconditional “yes” to the beloved person:
- confirm it in its being: it is wonderful that you exist!;
- to absolutely endorse the creative action that gave it that being;
- recreate it again and again with your own affection.
And that radical confirmation, derived from and almost identical to the act of loving:
- not only does it bring with it multiple improvements for the loved one,
- but it illuminates the entire universe
- and it also causes intense growth in the one who performs the act of loving.
The sublimity of love leaves a clear mark on the many positive effects that follow from loving.
The sublimity of the act of loving is manifested,
first and foremost,
in the positive effects that derive from it.
Negative realities that also confirm the greatness of loving
The same can be observed from the opposite extreme, highlighting what happens when love declines or when the person we love is no longer with us:
- The suffering then experienced has just confirmed, by contrast, the extent to which love gives all its meaning to human existence.
Both the positive effects, studied in the preceding article, and the negative realities derived from the various deficiencies that affect love underline the same fact: the unparalleled sublimity that elevates the act of loving above any other human activity.
Well, among the sharp, painful and destructive signs that confirm by contrast the greatness of loving, perhaps the two clearest are the death of the one we love and unrequited love.
Just as love makes the entire universe shine
and perfects our own person,
what we experience when love “fails”
also testifies to the greatness of the sublime act of loving.
The death of a loved one
Let’s focus for now on the death of the loved one.
Undoubtedly, we feel a true emptiness when we lose someone we love with all our soul: husband, wife, child, boyfriend or girlfriend, close friend.
But that’s not all.
When the act of loving cannot be sustained, when loving seems impossible, the entire universe, which love had made shine, suddenly becomes meaningless, tedious, and lacking in color, texture, and relief.
Nothing around us, nothing we do and what we used to enjoy, now has any reason to exist.
It seems as if everything faded away along with the person whom, as Augustine of Hippo recalls, “we had loved as if he were never going to die.”
When a loved one dies,
when loving seems impossible,
we feel the emptiness of their loss…
and the whole universe becomes meaningless.
2. The impossibility of loving, in literature and in life
Testimonies from literature…
History and literature offer us a multitude of testimonies like those we have pointed out, both similar and very diverse.
Or rather, the many and very different attempts to explain the nature of love coincide on this specific property:
- In any of them, the loss of a loved one causes a lack of meaning for the one who loves, for any of their actions, and for everything and everyone around them.
Among the classics, this is demonstrated by these four famous verses of Garcilaso de la Vega:
- The foundation that sustained my weary life has crumbled. / Oh, how much good ends in just one day! / Oh, how many hopes are carried away by the wind!
A contemporary poet, Antonio Machado, also experienced this, as José Luis Cano recounts:
- …in Soria, Machado becomes his wife’s nurse, her health being his sole concern. After an apparent improvement, Leonor’s condition worsens again, but before dying, she experiences a moment of joy when Antonio hands her the first copy of Campos de Castilla .
- A few days later, on August 1st, Leonor died in the poet’s arms. His wife’s death plunged Machado into such deep sorrow that the success of Campos de Castilla —whose publication was enthusiastically received by Madrid critics, led by Ortega and Azorín—did not alleviate it.
And it continues:
- At one point he thought about committing suicide, as he confesses in a letter to Juan Ramón: “When I lost my wife I thought about shooting myself.
- The success of my book saved me, and not out of vanity, God knows that!, but because I thought that, if there was a useful force in me, I had no right to annihilate it.
The loss of a loved one causes a lack of meaning
in oneself and one’s activities,
and in everything and everyone around them.
…and of life itself, when it collides with death
Simone de Beauvoir
It is not surprising, then, that Simone de Beauvoir experienced something similar, whose conception of love is almost the opposite of the one I outline in this set of writings.
When Sartre’s lover believes he has died, as a result of a hunger strike, and can no longer love him, a profound desolation takes hold of her:
- There were no men left, there never would be, and I didn’t know why I was absurdly surviving.
There were no men left,
there never would be,
and I don’t know why I absurdly survived.
Augustine of Hippo
And it should not be surprising, if one reflects calmly, that the feeling I am dealing with is common, to a certain extent, to those who deny the existence of God and to those who firmly believe in Him: for the very nature of the act of loving retains a clear resemblance in both.
- Among the latter, the words of Augustine of Hippo are well known , which I will transcribe below:
- What terrible pain for my heart!
- Everything I looked at was death to me: the city became unbearable, my house insufferable, and everything I had shared with him became a cruel torment without him.
- I looked for him everywhere and he didn’t appear, and I came to hate all things, because they didn’t have him and couldn’t tell me like before, when he came after an absence: “Here he is coming” […].
- Only tears were sweet to me and took the place of my friend in the delights of my heart […]. I marveled that people continued to live, the one I had loved as if he would never die dead; and I marveled even more that, his death, I continued to live, for I was another him.
I was amazed that people continued to live,
even after the one I had loved
as if he would never die was dead.
C.S. Lewis
Lewis experienced something similar, and wrote it down, a few months after his wife died, when it seemed impossible that he could love her:
- It’s not true that I’m always thinking about H. Work and conversation make it impossible.
- But the times when I’m not thinking about her might be the worst.
- Because then, even if the reason has been forgotten, a vague feeling of falseness, of absurdity, spreads over all things.
A vague sense of falseness, of absurdity, pervades everything.
Lewis continues:
- Like those dreams where nothing terrible happens—not even anything worth mentioning when recounting them at breakfast time—and yet the overall atmosphere and flavor are deadly.
- Well, the same.
- I see the berries of the wild ash tree turning red and for a few moments I don’t understand why they of all things can be depressing.
- I hear a bell ringing, and a certain quality that its ringing once had has vanished from it.
- What’s happening to the world that it’s become so flat, so mean, so worn out?
- And then it dawns on me.
The radical energy that makes us who we are
is transmitted to us, in part,
through the loved person
and the very act of loving.
3. The inexhaustible power of love, even above death
Superior in death?
But the final word does not belong to Simone de Beauvoir, Augustine of Hippo, or Lewis.
It’s time to take another step.
To love is also to say: “even if you were to die…”
To love is above all to say: “you will not die…
even if you have died.”
To illustrate this, I will cite a couple of significant testimonies that are not too far removed in time.
It is noted through them:
- That the power of love is capable of generating happiness, even in the midst of tremendously adverse, extremely painful circumstances.
- And that same energy—that of authentic love—seems to overcome even death , and in fact, it does!
The genuine act of love engenders happiness,
even above death.
The evocative energy of love
It is narrated by Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist, creator of logotherapy.
After years in the concentration camp, in moments of special sadness and helplessness, he clings to the love that gives life to his wife, whose fate he ignores—he does not know if she is alive or dead—and through her he recovers and preserves his own life.
For didactic reasons, I offer the fact first, and in subsequent paragraphs Frankl’s reflections.
- He writes, first of all, about the beginning of the experience, when his memory and imagination vividly present him with the image of his wife:
- But my mind clung to the image of my wife, imagining her with astonishing precision. She answered me, smiled at me, and looked at me with her warm, open gaze. Real or unreal, her gaze shone brighter than the rising sun.
Real or unreal,
her gaze shone brighter than the rising sun.
Love, the only sure source of happiness
And from there, his discoveries of the profound energy contained in the act of loving begin, and, for us, the teachings about it.
- Above all, the sublime greatness of love, which elevates man to his fullness.
- In that state of nostalgic intoxication, a thought crossed my mind that petrified me, for for the first time I understood the solid truth scattered in the songs of so many poets or proclaimed in the brilliant wisdom of thinkers and philosophers: love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire.
- Immediately, the relationship between love and happiness, understood as fulfillment and bliss.
- Then I perceived in all its depth the meaning of the greatest secret that poetry, thought, and human beliefs try to communicate to us: the salvation of man is only possible in love and through love.
- I sensed how a man, stripped of everything, can taste happiness — even if it is only a sigh of happiness — if he contemplates the face of his loved one.
“The salvation of man
is only possible in love and through love.”
Love, stronger than death
- Finally, the imperious victory of love over death and over any other evil, as well as its capacity to perfect the human being, in any circumstance.
- Even when a man finds himself in a situation of absolute desolation, without the possibility of expressing himself through positive action, with the only life horizon being to correctly endure—with dignity—the omnipresent suffering, even in that situation that man can find fulfillment in the loving contemplation of the image of his beloved person.
Emphasis.
- But it doesn’t end there. The experience is completed with another text by Frankl, which explicitly affirms the superiority of love over death.
- My mind still clung to the image of my wife. Suddenly, a disquiet gripped me: I didn’t know if she was still alive. Yet now I was convinced of one thing, something I had learned all too well: love transcends the physical person of the beloved and finds its deepest meaning in the other’s spiritual being, in their innermost self.
- Whether that person was present or not, whether they were still alive or not, somehow lost its importance. I didn’t know if my wife was alive and had no way of finding out (throughout my captivity we never had any postal contact with the outside world); although at that moment that vital question ceased to matter to me.
“Love transcends the physical person of the beloved
and finds its deepest meaning
in the spiritual being of the other, in their innermost self.”
- I felt no need to test it: nothing could affect the strength of my love, my thoughts, or the loving gaze of his spiritualized figure.
- Had I known of my wife’s death at that time, I believe I would still have surrendered myself—oblivious to reality—to the contemplation of her image and mentally conversed with her with the same vividness and satisfaction. “Seal your heart with me… for love is as strong as death” ( Song of Songs 8:6).
Nothing could affect the strength of my love
(not even the death of my beloved).
To love is to say a yes of such magnitude
that the entire universe is transfigured:
the person we love
and ourselves as well.
(To be continued)
Tomás Melendo,
President of Edufamilia
http://www.edufamilia.com
[email protected]
EduFamilia
Edufamilia es una asociación sin ánimo de lucro, nacida en el año 2005. Su fundador, Tomás Melendo, advirtió que una mejora en la calidad de las familias facilitaría la resolución de bastantes de los problemas que aquejan a la sociedad de hoy. Y, apoyado siempre por su mujer, decidió lanzarse a esta aventura que cuenta con casi veinte años de vida y con múltiples ediciones de los distintos cursos formativos: Másteres y Maestrías, Expertos, cursos más breves, conferencias, ciclos culturales, seminarios y otros programas educativos. Aunque las primeras ediciones tuvieron carácter presencial, actualmente se ha hecho un gran esfuerzo por promover la infraestructura virtual para adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos y que la formación en torno a la familia alcance al mundo entero.
