Love, Understanding & Paradox

I didn't think the topic of love could spawn so much obsessive contemplation, but I should have: how else to explain Danielle Steele (and if you link to this, check out the erm, quality of the text -- about typical of her readers, I'd say) and Harlequin Books? I forgot that love is such a sought- after concept that libraries overflow with stories mired in the rather limited potential outcomes of grand passions and pedestrian dalliances. Yet even when we know what's probably going to happen, we keep reading and reading and talking and talking about it.

Perhaps we keep studying the subject (or torturing ourselves with it) because we all so desire to be loved (and love to be desired). Perhaps it's because love has a quality of magic to it, a sense that a leap of faith is required, and if you're brave enough to make that leap, you've somehow managed to go beyond yourself... at least for a little while. Then, of course, you discover that what Fromm espoused is true: loving is an art, and like any art, you must work at mastering the theory and the practice. And as with music or painting or writing, despite all of your efforts, you will probably fail to achieve any great distinction.

But that's the human condition, to quest and fall short and quest again -- what else do we really have to do, anyway? And that first rush of love always holds such potential, so much possibility that we might get it right this time, that Fate and all our choices up till now have led us to a person who will not only love us but truly recognize who we are hiding behind all the smoke and mirrors we construct to protect ourselves. Like Fromm, I think that's what we all want more than anything: for someone to see us as we are; for someone to understand and accept us. It's the best we can hope for as we hope for the best.

"Life has taught us that love does not consist of gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry