The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde
Quote: Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart.
My Notes:
’She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses,’ cried the young Student; ‘but in all my garden there is no red rose.’ From her nest in the holm-oak tree the Nightingale heard him, and she looked out through the leaves, and wondered.
The aesthetic life is an interesting one. The summary before the passage goes, “[Oscar Wilde] was the leader of the aesthetic movement that advocated ‘art for art’s sake’…”
I can remember the first time I read one of my favorite books: “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by the same author. That summer was one of the liveliest and simultaneously languorous, since I spent a lot of hours listening to the audiobook and basking in golden sunlight that cast a spectral shadow through the leaves of trees I was wandering underneath. Oscar Wilde, to me, is maybe the best mediator for life as it’s supposed to be lived, with a sort of stupor, a lambent, flowing energy of tiny pleasures like being a backyard and hearing songbirds sing, or the rustling of leaves after a cool breeze in the summertime.
Instead of the AC, it’s being underneath the shade of a tree, or swinging on an old, creaky swing discolored by mold and fungi while you write a newsletter no one reads.
‘No red rose in all my garden!’ he cried, and his beautiful eyes filled with tears. ‘Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.’ ‘Here at last is a true lover,’ said the Nightingale. “Night after night have I sung of him, though I knew him not; night after night have I told his story to the stars, and now I see him…
‘The Prince gives a ball to-morrow night,’ murmured the young Student, ‘and my love will be of the company. If I bring her a red rose she will dance with me till dawn. If I bring her a red rose, I shall hold her in my arms, and she will lean her head upon my shoulder, and her hand will be clasped in mine. But there is no red rose in my garden, so I shall sit lonely, and she will pass me by. She will have no heed of me, and my heart will break.’
I’ve always been impressed by the inversion of the subject-verb structure, called anastrophe. For example, in the passage above, Wilde writes: “Ah, on what little things does happiness depend!”
The “normal” sentence structure might go “Happiness depends on little things,” but then it’s flipped, and it completely changes the direction of the voice from being almost descriptive to a soliloquy. I’m not going to pretend like I can analyze that inversion perfectly, but doesn’t it seem great for the style of writing Wilde engages in? It’s romantic, expositional, a little superficial and exaggerated, but that’s not because it’s fake–in actuality, it’s because it’s closer to how we feel than everyday conversational english is.
I learned about the term lingua franca in my Human Geography class (shoutout Mr. Dzialo). Lingua franca refers to the “language of business,” in essence, what are the most popular, most streamlined and accessible languages, such that globalization can benefit from those languages because they’re just easier to do business with (or because the U.S. colonized your country and set up a puppet government, overthrowing your democracy for the benefit of foreign powers–sorry!). This device of anastrophe seems great help in making almost anything seem romantic, like the lingua franca of the heart.
For example:
“I shat my pants.”
Yuck. No thank you. But what if it was:
“The tremulous waters stirred and could hold the waste no longer, as the pants expelled my foul filth.”
As you can see, I didn’t change a single word between the sentences, but simply reversing the sentence order, I basically made a Valentine’s Day card you could ship straight to your significant other (I’ll even take care of the delivery costs for you!)
I must say, in relation to the actual text, that although I’m not one to bitch about “beauty standards” or the biases that we have about beauty, Wilde seems to have, almost always, a certain kinship with “pale ivory faces” and “rosy-red lips.” Are we not concerned that this child is dying? One Google search with these symptoms and you’re going to have to start thinking about roses, but for a different purpose (to put on the child’s grave).
I’ve been thinking about “soulmates” and “significant others” a bit, and my intuition is, if I don’t end up with someone I’m not attracted to, that is, someone who doesn’t radiate beauty, I don’t think I’ll ever settle down.
I was just at Lake Geneva yesterday, walking around alone, and I noticed I wasn’t getting any looks. Usually, I at least get some interested looks from girls, and guys, forgive me for divulging this, but that’s literally the best feeling that exists for a guy. To have a cute girl look at you is to enter a storyline of your own choosing, to create a relationship with her on your own terms, it’s heaven. I know it’s not super virtuous to say, but it’s true–everyone wants a relationship on their own terms, we just compromise because we don’t want to die alone. As I was walking around with no looks, it occurred to me why I was getting no looks–at 16, when I was equally lonesome in being “out-and-about” in public places (what, I like people watching, sue me), at least there was the excuse, “Oh, he’s 16, he’s young. There’s nothing wrong with him, he might’ve just broken up with someone or he’s the lonely kid in high school.” The problem is, the lonely kid in high school either gets his shit together and settles, or he shoots up a school and/ or kills himself. Unfortunately for me, I’m too idealistic to settle (also, how patronizing is the idea of “settling,” how insulting to the person you’re with if you’re “settling” for them), and I’m too prideful and sane to shoot up a school and/ or kill myself. So I’m STUCK!. At 16, you can be alone, at 22, you’re a public eyesore if you’re alone–“You mean to tell me, in 22 years, you couldn’t find one person that wanted to go somewhere with you?!”
What the hell do you want from me people? I like going places alone, and I don’t like being responsible for entertaining people when I go there, it’s a win-win!
This idealization of a rose, of the restraint to want to lay a girl’s head upon your shoulder and clasp her hand in yours is really resonant with me, but it’s also bullshit. It just is. There are moments where you’re so tired that you don’t have the energy to doubt or to fear, but fear and doubt (which culminate in anxiety), end up being, pretty much, the principal emotions you feel about a significant other (that is, if you’re like me–if you’re normal, you’re fine). I’m not doubting the premise, I’m just saying it’s missing a few key details. The “romantic” guys? Yeah, they’re usually gay or alone, and honestly, at this point, I might just be gay y’all (that’s a joke, but sometimes you gotta take what you can get).
‘Here indeed is the true lover,’ said the Nightingale. ‘What I sing of, he suffers: what is joy to me, to him is pain…
‘The musicians will sit in their gallery,’ said the young Student, ‘and play upon their stringed instruments, and my love will dance to the sound of the harp and the violin…
But with me she will not dance, for I have no red rose to give her’; and he flung himself down on the grass, and buried his face in his hands, and wept.
I don’t know exactly why, but I surmise that if we were to allow men to be boys, the way they’re boys around their (presumably great, loving, nurturing) mothers, society would be full of men flinging themselves to the ground and weeping at every little thing. We’re overdramatic as hell, man. And not just the effeminate ones, either. I mean, look at the pickup truck drivers with the nutsacks on their rear bumpers–that’s the equivalent of a grown man throwing a hissy fit. Same thing with people who fly MAGA flags or wear MAGA hats. I’m sure there’s a leftist equivalent, but it’s probably just most leftist men (myself included). I’m also unconvinced that being in the army, for at least 80% of people, isn’t just about trying to kill the impulse to fling yourself on the ground and weep.
You know what the real problem with men is, today? It’s that we don’t know how to fling ourselves on the ground and weep properly. If you told me, “It’s okay, no one hates you, you’re loved,” or whatever the fuck I needed to hear, I’d probably just say something like: “Am I dying soon? What the fuck are you trying to tell me?”
I have almost no receptacle for pity for myself, I generally have no capacity for it. If I do pity myself, it lasts for a good 30 seconds, and then it just feels like laughing therapy–a scam.
We’ve gotta get more flingers, fellas. Fling away, my fellow countrymen.
the Nightingale understood the secret of the Student’s sorrow, and she sat silent in the oak-tree, and thought about the mystery of Love.
Suddenly she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She passed through the grove like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed across the garden.
This idea of a shadow, I’m embarrassed to say, I don’t get. What is it, common knowledge that shadows sail? What is a shadow a middle aged white man with 3 divorces and a net worth of 6 million, why do shadows sail? Sailing connotes this grand image, the mast and the bow passing by slowly but triumphantly, but a tiny nightingale? Why not “scurried,” or “swam,” to connote the flowy, fluid motion of a bird’s flight? I realize I’m being pedantic without much payoff, but it’s important to note–a songbird is not like a shadow, at all. But maybe in the context of love, it is. Light is a trope often used in 19th century literature to convey some sort of purity and or sensorial transcendence, like light has to do with God’s reflection, or like the amber radiance of God’s visage. Importantly, although shadows are used as the antithetical, sort of underbelly of light, it’s also important to note that shadows work in conjunction with light. I don’t have the physics to back it up, but it seems important that shadows act the undercarriage of light, its externality, a consequence of the light.
I know that Wilde is connoting a sense of a fleeting, undefined, amorphic figure, but it doesn’t seem to meld well in my reading of the thing. Could just be the heat in this backyard, though.
’Give me a red rose,’ she cried, ‘and I will sing you my sweetest song.’ But the Tree shook its head.
‘My roses are white,’ it answered; “as white as the foam of the sea, and whiter than the snow upon the mountain. But go to my brother who grows round the old sun-dial, and perhaps he will give you what you want.’
I miss the times when authors could just as easily reference colors as they could items or manifestations of those colors. The “snowy mountains, white as the foam of the sea.” UGH, I mean what a feast man. Nowadays, everything’s been used! As white as the foam of the sea, as white as snowy mountains, as white as Jared Kushner, all of it. I’m referencing the fucking color wheel just to get a hold of something remotely white: “As white as my airpods case after a few weeks of being in my linty pocket.”
’Give me a red rose,’ she cried, ‘and I will sing you my sweetest song.’ But the Tree shook its head.
‘My roses are red,’ it answered; ‘as red as the feet of the dove, and redder than the great fans of coral that wave and wave in the ocean cavern. But the winter has chilled my veins, and the frost has nipped my buds, and the storm has broken my branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year.’ ‘One red rose is all I want,’ cried the Nightingale. ‘Only one red rose! Is there any way by which I can get it?’ ‘There is a way,’ answered the Tree; ‘but it is so terrible that I dare not tell it to you.’ ‘Tell it to me,’ said the Nightingale, ‘I am not afraid.’ ‘If you want a red rose,’ said the Tree, ‘you must build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart’s-blood. You must sing to me with your breast against a thorn. All night long you must sing to me, and the thorn must pierce your heart, and your life-blood must flow into my veins, and become mine.’
As Vince Staples said:
I'll never find a equal mind, I'll settle for the fattest ass (for real)
I'm tryna make a way and all she say is, "Bae, you make me laugh" (what's so fucking funny?)
Heavy is the hand that reaches past the plates to pay the tab
But niggas gotta eat, right?
Right?
These hoes’ll get you killed, man. And ladies, that goes for you too.
I’m a fan of living, and truly a fan of dying–dying sounds fantastic. No more people, no more ambition, no more trying–sign me up–but I’d prefer to die for something. Love feels like the most “movie-esc.” heuristic for deciding what that something should be, but that begs the question–when do you know it’s time?
There are a few people I’d die for, sure, but if they made me upset for a day, and that was the day I had to die for them? Catch me after lunch, bro bro, I am not in the mood right now.
We have many heuristics, as men, in determining one crucial fact about ourselves: “When the shit hits the fan, will we step up and die for what’s worthy?” And oh my goodness, the proxies are ridiculous: sizing people up when we walk past them on the street, signing up for the military, signing up (voluntarily) for a private SEAL training camp simulation from ex-military (who never made it anywhere) and getting yelled at, by the people you paid to train you, for some 4-5 days so that you can feel like you have some testosterone. It’s ridiculous, but it’s just the extreme version of the little things men do everyday, anyways. Even the men with security, the ones that white women gossip about (“Where did you find this guy, I need me that Whole Foods, girl HAHAHAHAHAHHAHh”) all have some insecurity, it’s just the thing of masking it. In my experience, the guys with the enough of a fucked up childhood that they have something to quell, but not enough that they become Sean Strickland is the sweet spot. They have the motivation to get jacked, but not to hurt people unnecessarily–the Noel (bodybuilder guy), Brian Shaw, James Cappola type of guys.
All of that being said, I don’t think anyone’s certain about when or for what reason they would choose to die for someone. Is it love, is it duty, is it some evolutionary component deeply embedded in our biology, who knows? But love seems to have a lot of company, I’d say.
“‘Death is a great price to pay for a red rose,’ cried the Nightingale, ‘and Life is very dear to all…Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?’ So she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She swept over the garden like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed through the grove.”
Even though I would consider myself a romantic, I strive to be realistic, somewhat against my own wishes. I love well written stories, but do I love life? Yes. Love is my way to appreciating things, but maybe that’s not love, that’s just preference. Love is more than preference, I’m learning is the masthead of the aesthetic movement. And you know what? I can dig it. This is the first time, I think, I’ve started a sentence and found my way to disproving what I was going to say within the same paragraph–saved you all a lot of time.
I can see how it’s possible for Love to be better than Life, implied in that is the idea that one can love Love more than they love Life. But the question is, is that a way to live (notice the lowercase “live”). What I mean to say is, living requires some order, some structure, some framework. If you go around, willy-nilly loving people, you’ll stumble across some shady figures, some people who might be worthy of Love, that you want to love, but whom you end up dying for, only to realize they wanted you to die so they could accept your inheritance (ouch).
Love is delicate, man. Despite all the ways to express Love, there’s really only one way to love, and that’s to love wholly. And, I mean, are you shitting me? Do you know anyone, PERSONALLY, that found something worth loving that way? I might have one person, might, and we’ll see how that ends up 15 years from now. Then again, life is tough, and it grinds authenticity down to hopelessness and insecurity. but if Love cannot survive life, then maybe you should love Love more than you love Life. I personally can’t imagine a person out there being worth loving more than Life, but you never know.
There’s also the repetition of the “she swept over the garden like a shadow...” line, but I still don’t know what that means.
The young Student was still lying on the grass, where she had left him, and the tears were not yet dry on his beautiful eyes.
‘Be happy,’ cried the Nightingale, ‘be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart’s-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover,…
The Student looked up from the grass, and listened, but he could not understand what the Nightingale was saying to him, for he only knew the things that are written down in books. But the Oak-tree understood, and felt sad, for he was very fond of the little nightingale who had built her nest in his branches.
You know what’s great about the arts? It reminds you that when you’re sad, there’s always a way you can be sadder.
There are people dying for love everyday who don’t understand love as anything more than a collection of motifs evoking some complex emotion you think is permanent. My conception of love is a reel in my head, little conversations, wishes of how she’d be and what she’d do, but they always fade, and the emotions always subside. I’m not saying I know better, but I stay away for a reason. The reason’s completely impractical, but it soothes you to know that staying away is because you know how ignorant you are, not because you think you’re undeserving.
The nightingale’s made a nest, a home in the Oak-tree, and there’s clearly some evocation of true love, or something purer than the “love” the student has for the object of his affection, which is probably a better description than his “love.” The Oak-tree would be saddened by the departure of the songbird for no other reason than his fondness of her, and there’s something deeply poetic about that. You might remember from biology the types of relationships organisms have with each other–mutualism, parasitism, and commensalism. This reminds me of commensalism, but with an incredibly human twist. Commensalism means, basically, that one species relies on another for something, but the species that’s being relied on isn’t made worse by the first species’ reliance. For example, a squirrel living in a tree has a home, so it’s benefitting from the tree, but the tree isn’t made worse off by the squirrel, nor is it made better off.
There’s something so childlike in its purity regarding the dependence of the nightingale on the Oak-tree, but I don’t know why. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the nightingale provides song, levity, true, brutal romance and beauty, and the Oak-tree is this living, quiet, strong entity that remains through time, and watches silently as these atrocities are being committed.
Another thing that’s worth noting: essentially, the nightingale isn’t aware of what true love is in another, but it lives as Love, it embodies Love. What that means in terms of not being able to recognize Love, I don’t know, but it suggests some kind of purity and naivety necessary for loving something or someone.
’She has form,’ he said to himself, as he walked away through the grove, ‘that cannot be denied her; but has she got feeling? I am afraid not. In fact, she is like most artists; she is all style, without any sincerity. She would not sacrifice herself for others. She thinks
merely of music, and everybody knows that the arts are selfish. Still, it must be admitted that she has some beautiful notes in her voice. What a pity it is that they do not mean anything, or do any practical good.’ And he went into his room, and lay down on his little pallet-bed, and began to think of his love; and, after a time, he fell asleep.
Given the description before, that the boy didn’t understand what the nightingale had said because the boy only knows Love from what’s written in books, it seems that this idea of form versus feeling, style versus sincerety might be, implicitly, the wrong comparison to make. Or, as I think is more likely, is the failure, on the part of the boy, to implement that judgement in his own life, which itself fails the test of Love. Here’s the nightingale sacrificing herself out of Love, and here’s the boy refusing to give up his infatuation because it makes him feel close to the Love he’s read about in books.
I guess Love that’s pretending isn’t the real thing, not even a little.
And when the Moon shone in the heavens the Nightingale flew to the Rosetree, and set her breast against the thorn. All night long she sang with her breast against the thorn, and the cold, crystal Moon leaned down and listened. All night long she sang, and the thorn went deeper and deeper into her breast, and her lifeblood ebbed away from her.
She sang first of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl. And on the topmost spray of the Rose-tree there blossomed a marvellous rose, petal followed petal, as song followed song…
But the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn. ‘Press closer, little Nightingale,’ cried the Tree, ‘or the Day will come before the rose is finished.’ So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and louder and louder grew her song, for she sang of the birth of passion in the soul of a man and a maid…
But the thorn had not yet reached her heart, so the rose’s heart remained white, for only a Nightingale’s heart’s-blood can crimson the heart of a rose.
And the Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn. ‘Press closer, little Nightingale,’ cried the Tree, ‘or the Day will come before the rose is finished.’ So the Nightingale pressed closer against the thorn, and the thorn touched her heart, and a fierce pang of pain shot through her. Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song, for she sang of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb.
And the marvellous rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky.
Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart.
But the Nightingale’s voice grew fainter, and her little wings began to beat, and a film came over her eyes. Fainter and fainter grew her song, and she felt something choking her in her throat.
Then she gave one last burst of music…
‘Look, look!’ cried the Tree, ‘the rose is finished now’; but the Nightingale made no answer, for she was lying dead in the long grass, with the thorn in her heart.
If I could just end today’s newsletter with the rest of this story, I would, there’s nothing that would make me happier, but that sort of defeats the purpose, and is artistically lazy. That being said, that mammoth of text you had to overcome was HALF of the breathtakingly beautiful writing that took place around it. I’ve never said this explicitly before, but you have to read this short story, you just have to. Usually, I cut things out of short stories to focus on plot and a couple peripheral details, but rarely do I feel like omitting certain sentences really takes the heart away from the piece, and I’m a little shocked by just how barren the quotation above feels without every word of what Wilde wrote (which is high praise to writers, because that means every word is gold). I genuinely can’t find a loose word anywhere, or it would take me a while, and would reduce my enjoyment of the story tenfold.
The pains of love, somehow, we’ve made into something morally beautiful, like something that’s formed of pure morality and virtuosity at its core that just radiates beauty, emanating powerfully from within.
That thing that we’ve made beautiful is suffering–pure, unadulterated suffering. At its core, I think it’s the idea of “the worst thing that must happen for the most virtuous outcome,” which makes it follow that everything that happens, the plunging of the thorn deeper and deeper into the heart, the wild bursts of beautiful song that blossom from that suffering, everything MUST happen. All of it, otherwise the product isn’t as beautiful. Our rationale for that has always been that “such is life,” or, “that’s how the world works.”
I’m not convinced that’s true, but I’m also not convinced by the idea that we shouldn’t prepare to endure something that difficult.
You ever do that thing when you played basketball as a kid where you say, “Okay, if I make this shot, my crush likes me back.” That thing of gambling with the universe? As children we knew about how powerful the world is, and how complex the world is intuitively. When you ask something to happen like a prayer that you disseminate out into the world, the things that happen, at least in your rich inner life, somehow follow from that fantasy that everything’s happening to you. What Joan Didion called being “exempt from the cause-effect relationships that hampered others.” Somehow, you have a throughline dissecting through the very heart of the thing.
Being agnostic even today, I recognize my tenuous and fragile relationship with the world, flawed as that reasoning may be, and I treat it with respect. It really feels like my sanity depends, sometimes, on checking in with this childhood narrative, “God,” “Life,” whatever you want to call it, from time to time, needing its attention, needing to see the whole of it again to remind me what this is all for. It’s a heavy burden to take, to think to yourself everything–all the suffering, the beauty, the longing, the neediness, the hopes, dreams, everything in between–must be included to live Life, and to spawn Love.
I don’t know if Wilde genuinely believes that a songbird must die to paint a rose crimson as he insinuates was necessary in the ritual, to create an emblem of Love, something so beautiful and transcendent that beauty itself has to die for it, but at the very least, that should be a cautionary tale to most of how you treat that suffering.
And at noon the Student opened his window and looked out.
‘Why, what a wonderful piece of luck!’ he cried; ‘here is a red rose! I have never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name’; and he leaned down and plucked it.
Then he put on his hat, and ran up to the Professor’s house with the rose in his hand…
‘You said that you would dance with me if I brought you a red rose,’ cried the Student. ‘Here is the reddest rose in all the world. You will wear it to-night next your heart, and as we dance together it will tell you how I love you.’ But the girl frowned.
‘I am afraid it will not go with my dress,’ she answered; ‘and, besides, the Chamberlain’s nephew has sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers.’ ‘Well, upon my word, you are very ungrateful,’ said the Student, angrily; and he threw the rose into the street, where it fell into the gutter, and a cartwheel went over it.
‘Ungrateful!’ said the girl. “I tell you what, you are very rude; and, after all, who are you? Only a Student. Why, I don’t believe you have even got silver buckles to your shoes as the Chamberlain’s nephew has’;
It’s easy to say, “what a materialistic, selfish bitch. I’ll bet she even has an OnlyFans, the raging cunt.” but let’s not forget, he’s just as materialistic–it’s an exchange of goods, a rose for a dance. None of that inscribes Love, does it? You could say his intentions seemed pure, but I’d beg to differ. Let’s go over what actually happened: he flung himself on the ground like a child and cried, he thought the rose appearing near him was “luck,” one of his first thoughts was that the rose would have a “long Latin name” (not gonna knock the kid for a thought, but come on, man), and then promptly threw the rose on the street when he was rejected and said the girl was ungrateful. Not that she broke his heart or that he implored her to take a chance on him, but that she was ungrateful. Like she owed him a chance.
The girl’s not off the hook, either. Let’s not forget how materialistic she is, and at the crux of the problem is this–what is ENOUGH for these bitches? And by bitches, I do mean women, but only from the vantage point of a man. If I was a woman (which I technically could be at some point, if I so chose), I’d see things completely differently: “Who does this man think he is, obsessing over a girl he doesn’t know? Who thought he should have a chance? Why would she owe him anything? Boss bitches don’t give chances to lames.” Or whatever other stupid shit millennial women say.
It goes both ways, this commodification of love. Commodification in quantity, sure, but also in performance. Ostentatiousness only matters when she can see the suffering, but when it’s inscribed, it doesn’t feel real. Or at least, not worthwhile.
There’s a real disillusionment that happens when we deny other people richness of reality we ourselves selfishly indulge in privately. If we have this grand sense of Love, and someone else does something small, but inconducive, or not performative enough, etc. to match that sense of Love, our instinct is to punish them, to banish them. It almost feels like they’ve let our internal narratives down, and again, that’s where our own sanity comes from, it matters what our internal story is.
What I don’t understand, or rather, what I’m slow to understand (or what I refuse to understand) is how any of this is at all justifiable? We oppress each other, all the time.
This is going to sound fucked up because you’re not supposed to say this out loud, but short, fat, ugly people? They live entirely different lives than the rest of us. When they wait at a bus stop, they look down at their phones, because they know no one’s looking towards them in longing. When they walk past you on the sidewalk, they never glance over because they know you won’t even give them a smile, and we feel bad for them when they do look towards us, as if thinking to ourselves: “Oh, you poor thing, you think you have a chance with me?”
It’s so patronizing what we’ve done with Love. We’ve bastardized it, flogged it, whipped it, spurned it, ruined it by sharing it with other people under false premises, that they should “show up” for us in only the way we think we deserve, it’s madness. Where is the grace? I guess we’ve thrown the grace baby out with the Love bathwater since, well, life is limited, and we want things now, so we can’t afford to wait around for good Love, we want to love and we want it now, EXACTLY how we crave it.
Is that the fault of our imagination? HELL no, imagination is the lifeblood of creativity, of softness and tenderness, of openness, that is, graciousness and empathy, you can’t be dismissive of that. But instead of nourishing and cherishing our imagination, we impose it cruelly on other people, as though people are entertainers for us, we act like sexually dangerous dominatrixes, and for no reason. Who asked you to ruin their life? Masochism is our favorite pastime, and we all pretend to be pure (shit, maybe I am a Christian). We love letting ourselves down because we’re too afraid of being vulnerable and patient, but most importantly truthful, with ourselves.
“It’s going to take time, buddy. She doesn’t owe you anything, but your love? That’s precious, and it’s yours to have. If she says no, that doesn’t diminish the love, but that means you have to let that love go, alright buddy? Don’t diminish the personhood, don’t diminish the love, don’t diminish the hope, let go of the burden on you to make it all work too quickly.”
‘What a silly thing Love is,’ said the Student as he walked away. ‘It is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and study Metaphysics.’
So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read.
The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde