Levels of Life

by Julian Barnes

Victor Hugo, said that a balloon was like a beautiful, drifting cloud—whereas what humanity needed was the equivalent of that gravity-defying miracle, the bird.

Such was humanity’s self-love, Nadar concluded, that most were inevitably disappointed when they finally saw a true image of themselves.

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

We live on the flat, on the level, and yet—and so—we aspire. Groundlings, we can sometimes reach as far as the gods. Some soar with art, others with religion; most with love. But when we soar, we can also crash. There are few soft landings.

He could hear himself living.

He was, he admitted, half confused and probably three-quarters in love.

He hadn’t asked what she meant when she told him she loved him. What lover ever does?

But if being on the level didn’t shield you from pain, maybe it was better to be up in the clouds.

“The thing is—nature is so exact, it hurts exactly as much as it is worth, so in a way one relishes the pain,

You ask yourself: to what extent in this turmoil of missing am I missing her, or missing the life we had together, or missing what it was in her that made me more myself, or missing simple companionship, or (not so simple) love, or all or any overlapping bits of each? You ask yourself: what happiness is there in just the memory of happiness? And how in any case might that work, given that happiness has only ever consisted of something shared? Solitary happiness—it sounds like a contradiction in terms, an implausible contraption that will never get off the ground.

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.

Perhaps grief, which destroys all patterns, destroys even more: the belief that any pattern exists.

You lose the world for a glance? Of course you do. That is what the world is for: to lose under the right circumstances.

I came to hate and fear that bridge, though never changed my route.

Why should anything happen when everything has happened?

But I think that grief is the place where statistics run out.

Sometimes, you want to go on loving the pain.