The Powerlessness of Love
Love conquers all, or so the saying goes. With that qualifier, I don’t mean to sound skeptical, because love’s power does transcend, often, and I’ve savored its fruits for the last forty-odd years. Love is what holds me together, gives me the confidence, energy, and courage to be an artist, lets me sleep at night when I fear I won’t, and prompts me to try to be a better husband, father, and friend. Whatever generous or altruistic impulses I have owe their existence to love, through one path or another, and I suppose most people would say that about themselves.
By the time I was thirty, I realized I’d felt little love growing up, at least not the kind I could take in and metabolize. But in my adult life, I’ve been nourished. And since love is what everyone talks about—not always from a satisfying or sustaining experience—I consider myself very fortunate.
Nevertheless, love also figures in my pantheon of forces that render humans powerless. After all, when you love, you’re putting yourself on the line. You risk rejection, which can turn into humiliation, especially if it happens repeatedly. You risk betrayal, loss, the crushing of hope, which makes you feel foolish for hoping, as if you should have known you’d be crushed. How effortlessly what seemed fine and special turns to shame or rancor. How could I even think that would work out? you ask yourself.
Again and again you ask, often at the expense of eating, sleeping, or doing productive work. Sadly, too, in this cruel world, there are people pleased to tell you, with a greater or lesser measure of glee, that you should never have even thought it would work out.
A plague on them. All the world may love a lover, but not necessarily a lover scorned.
But is there a choice? Does life offer any reward without risk? And though cynics or those incapable of emotional risk may call it weakness, they’re dead wrong. The willingness to be vulnerable is a strength and, I believe, the way I saved my own life. So here’s to feeling powerlessness because of love.