A terrible thing happened today. I looked into a copy of my alma mater’s quarterly magazine, and I found it charming.Life is so much easier when disgust accompanies hindsight.
I didn’t wish to go back. But I had no distaste to spur me forward.
Love is so much more permanent than hate.
Hate is appetitive. Hate, when it is our prime mover in a given motion, comes with an instinctive knowledge that once it is sated, we are free to discontinue the action.
In contrast, love is a force of the intellect. It has to be, by its very nature. That is why we desire it to come to us. That is why we fear it when it comes upon us. No matter how our appetites change, or the strength of our will, the intellectual is almost eternal. “It increases in years and beauty.”
I read the magazine and I thought fondly of what had passed.
The memory of an ended period of happiness causes me pain, like being hungry and remembering Christmas dinner. But I know that hunger is better than the solid stasis of constant disgust. It just is.
Why are we so afraid of what is permanent?
I wish that I could say.
(first published on 7.2.07, 8.55am)
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