July 1, 2008
A relationship, a marriage, love, is not an easy thing. To love from far away, perhaps even more difficult. I do feel though that part of our reason for existence, perhaps the reason for existence is to learn that love, not that love comes upon us and we skip through it's fields of unending wildflowers on perfect spring days, but more that we get down, and kneel in the mud and dig with our fingers and pull out the weeds, side by side, or maybe not even side by side, maybe we can only see one another's silhouettes in the distance, but we will be there, working under the orange sun, maybe not even understanding why. But we will always stand up at some point, and walk back home together through something beautiful. and something hard.
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3 comments:
this thought is so beautiful. i have turned it over in my head all day and yes, yes, it is wonderful and wise.
oh yes, oh lovely. i think that you're exactly right. i think that no matter what lessons i learn in life, the primary lesson, the one that keeps standing as the root of everything that i know and can continue to believe, is that we are meant for love, and that we are meant for difficulty, but we must work, and grow, and dig deep.
your thought connects so deeply to rilke's letters, perhaps because you love them so fully, but it is good to be reminded of the truth of both his and your words:
It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time ahead and far on into life, is - ; solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent - ?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.
that is one of my favorite rilke excerpts--thank you for posting it! such a wonderful addition to this blog.
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