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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
David Brooks
Read between
September 4 - September 9, 2023
“It is always astonishing how love can strike,” John O’Donohue writes in his book Beauty. “No context is love-proof, no convention or commitment impervious. Even a lifestyle which is perfectly insulated, where the personality is controlled, all the days ordered and all actions in sequence, can to its own dismay find that an unexpected spark has landed; it begins to smoulder until it is finally unquenchable. The force of Eros always brings disturbance; in the concealed terrain of the human heart Eros remains a light sleeper.”
For some reason, I have to know someone well in nonromantic circumstances before any meaningful spark can happen.
Love starts as a focusing of attention. The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.
About a fifth of adults in Western cultures are afraid of intimacy, afraid of commitment. They expect abandonment to happen and take actions to ensure that what is familiar will indeed come to pass. You can spot the people who fear intimacy because they suddenly disappear for a time, just when you thought you were getting close. They dislike the words “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” or any other term that suggests an official relationship. They tend to hide behind a wall of questions; they turn conversations to you in order to avoid exposing anything about themselves. They tend to express strong
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Phase by phase, the risks become bigger and bolder. Love is possible only if two people eventually reveal the center of their existences. If the love is to bloom, they have to get to, This is how I’m crazy. As Alain de Botton notes, we are all crazy in some way. The crucial question at the depth of any relationship is not Is he crazy? It is What are the ways you are crazy? What parts of your life have been blocked by fear? How exactly do you self-destruct? In what ways have you not been loved?
