We live in an industrialized and civilized society, and therefore a highly intellectualized one. Because of this, we want to explain everything, or try to, and so anything that seems to escape our logical reasoning appears, by that fact alone, stripped of any factual existence. In other words, if my reason does not conceive of it, it has no reason to exist. This notion that we drag around in our jobs, in our dealings with others and almost everywhere, we try to transpose into the realm of feelings as well. And that is where all the explanatory frameworks fall into confusion.
To that end, it must be noted that a thousand and one things simply do not answer to this paradigm. Let us set religion aside and talk about feelings. For if it appears that we cannot explain the religious, it seems even less evident that we cannot explain love either.
He has only spoken to me once, so he cannot love me.
He has never laid eyes on me, so he cannot love me.
He is married, so he cannot love me.
She is older than I am, so she cannot love me.
We have only seen each other once, so she cannot love me.
And so on.
There are a million false things we maintain tooth and nail out of a concern for self-protection. We erect barriers around ourselves which, in reality, conceal nothing but our inability to open ourselves up to life and to await the most beautiful things it has to offer us. We insist on conceptualizing everything and putting a word on everything. The existence of a single blurred patch seems to amount to a thorn in our side. And so, for as long as our brain has not managed to grasp the whole of it, we do not allow ourselves to move.
It will also have to be noted that these barriers not only prevent us from enjoying the riches of the present, but also wipe out our future chances of living out perfect love. As beings who do not know what tomorrow is made of, an openness of mind ought in principle to be our defining trait.
The pessimism we are pleased to call “realism” kills in us the splendour of discovery. Let us believe in “serendipity” and enjoy the magic of happy encounters. And if in the end our doubts turn out to be well founded, at least we will have tried. At the end of the day, the pain comes more from what we did not dare to do than from what we allowed ourselves to do. Man is a fabric of memories, and memories do not feed on self-denial but on measured adventures.
The best love, the true, the unconditional, the pure love, is the one we cannot explain; the one it is simply impossible to put words to. The illogical sentence “I love you because I love you” is the most logical one in love. And remember this: every time you force someone to explain to you why they love you, you are killing that love by slow degrees.
Love is not a science. Love is lived; it is not explained. The reason for love is love. The reason for love is who we love. As the philosophical aphorism of Blaise Pascal held in his Pensées, “the heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing”.
So dare, love, give someone a chance today.
Live, appreciate, delight, for love is not reason.
M.Z.
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