Still life with shells, orchids, and bowl. Fountain pen in sketchbook, 9" x 6". The ceramic bowl was made by my mother when she was around 20, long before I came along. I use it most days for my cereal in the morning because it reminds me of her.
On this Valentine's Day I'm thinking about all the people who've lost their lover, their husband or wife, their child or parent -- especially those losses that have occurred during the past year. It's an astronomical number. A mind-boggling number. A river of tears stretching around the world. For many of us, there may not have been an actual death of someone we loved deeply, but days and months when we feared it more than anything we've ever feared.
Why do we take the risk? Why do we love, if we know we're either opening ourselves, or the ones we love, to inevitable, eventual pain?
We seem to be wired for it, don't we? Of course, some of the people with whom we're in relationship came into our lives without any choice on our part: our families, mainly. But when it comes to erotic relationships, is it choice or fate?
Eros and his mother Aphrodite, from the museum at Pella, Greece, the birthplace of Alexander the Great.
Our modern minds tell us that love is a product of free will, but I'm not so sure. Cupid is featured in so much valentine imagery, but the Greeks who gave us Eros (the Greek name for the winged child-god, son of Aphrodite/Venus, with his quiver of arrows) didn't see him as a cute, benign cherub, but rather as the source of fatal attractions and passions that often satisfied the gods' desires to punish and torment humans. Their myths and plays are full of stories of star-crossed lovers, maidens and youths dying of unrequited passion after being struck with one of Cupid's arrows, or humans who've spurned the advances of the gods, only to be doomed to a fate of loving someone unattainable, or who dies (or is turned into a rock or a tree or a star) before the couple can attain happiness. Of course there are some stories with happy endings, too, but the Greeks understood the double-edge of love -- as most of us do, too.
I fell in love at first sight, more than forty years ago, and actually did feel like I had been pierced by an arrow. Somehow it worked out and has lasted a lifetime. We know how fortunate we are to wake together each morning. And more than ever before, we do not take this for granted: the happiness of being together is colored with the knowledge that it won't be that way forever. This year, in particular, I'm not inclined to post pictures of hearts and flowers on a day when so many people must be grieving. We ourselves had a close call this past year, and I've never been more frightened, or wept in such anguish. Love comes with risk. Is it worth it?
Yes. At least it has been for me.
Learning to love with my whole heart, and to accept love the same way, isn't the province only of romance: love takes many forms, as it needs to. Unless we open ourselves to the path of loving others, we'll never learn what it means, and never be changed by it. And of course love, and relationships, are never simple. Some exist for a lifetime, but many more do not, and there is always a temptation to hold back and protect ourselves from the possibility of loss. The paradox, though, is that the more we love, the more we see that our heart can be a pitcher that always refills, and that there will always be other people, as well as the earth and all its creatures, who need our love, even if Eros only gave us great romantic love for one person, and for a limited duration. The love we give throughout our life continues to reverberate for a long time. Realizing that nothing, not even death, can destroy my capacity to love, has been a comfort to me.