Levels of Life

by Julian Barnes

Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery.

You put together two people who have not been put together before; and sometimes the world is changed, sometimes not. They may crash and burn, or burn and crash. But sometimes, something new is made, and then the world is changed. Together, in that first exaltation, that first roaring sense of uplift, they are greater than their two separate selves. Together, they see further, and they see more clearly.

Every love story is a potential grief story. If not at first, then later. If not for one, then for the other. Sometimes, for both.

Early in life, the world divides crudely into those who have had sex and those who haven’t. Later, into those who have known love, and those who haven’t. Later still—at least, if we are lucky (or, on the other hand, unlucky)—it divides into those who have endured grief, and those who haven’t. These divisions are absolute; they are tropics we cross.

And as E. M. Forster put it, “One death may explain itself, but it throws no light upon another.” So grief in turn becomes unimaginable: not just its length and depth, but its tone and texture, its deceptions and false dawns, its recidivism.

Grief is a human, not a medical, condition, and while there are pills to help us forget it—and everything else—there are no pills to cure it. The griefstruck are not depressed, just properly, appropriately, mathematically (“it hurts exactly as much as it is worth”) sad.

Love may not lead where we think or hope, but regardless of outcome it should be a call to seriousness and truth. If it is not that—if it is not moral in its effect—then love is no more than an exaggerated form of pleasure. Whereas grief, love’s opposite, does not seem to occupy a moral space. The defensive, curled position it forces us into if we are to survive makes us more selfish. It is not a place of upper air; there are no views. You can no longer hear yourself living.

Grief is the negative image of love; and if there can be accumulation of love over the years, then why not of grief?

There are two essential kinds of loneliness: that of not having found someone to love, and that of having been deprived of the one you did love.

Sometimes, you want to go on loving the pain. And then, beyond this, yet another question sharply outlines itself on the cloud: is “success” at grief, at mourning, at sorrow, an achievement, or merely a new given condition? Because the notion of free will seems irrelevant here; the attribution of purpose and virtue—the idea of grief-work rewarded—feels misplaced.