Monday, July 27, 2015

Twenty-seven

I’ve sometimes wondered whether love might be the last illusion I have to kill before I can die. But love is not an illusion. At least not what I call love. 

Love is one of those words, like god, that has a different meaning for every person who claims to believe in it. Most of the people who claim to believe in god don’t (Oh Lord, I do believe, they cry; help thou mine unbelief) because they’ve never experienced god. Those who claim god is love obviously never experienced love, either, or they wouldn’t confuse it with the mysterium tremendum, because there’s nothing mysterious about love. It’s the most natural of things. It takes great strength of will not to love, but most people find the strength.

Those who claim god is love have a love-shaped hole in their lives identical in size to Pascal’s god-shaped hole, and they’re looking for someone or something to fill it. They’re not looking for a lover, or someone to love, but a god: someone or something who can do for them what they can’t or won't do for themselves. Someone they can love, and who can love them, as they can’t or won't love themselves. Someone they can live for and, if necessary, die for, because they have nothing in their lives that makes them worth living. 

If our lives seem meaningless, it’s an illusion to see others as meaningful, so that we find our meaning in living for them. Either all lives have meaning, or none do.

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