The Art of Withstanding Abandonment: The Patience of the Penguin and How Evolution Invented Faith

“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated,” Simone Weil wrote in her soulful meditation on the paradox of closeness and separation. To be separated from a loved one — in space or in silence, by choice or by circumstance — is a singularly discomposing experience. It takes a tremendous effort of the psyche to keep oneself from feeling abandoned, and we know from fMRI studies that every abandonment is experienced as a mini...