Being a ghostly commentator I do not have a heart of my own. I
don’t really need one, however, because I can observe Christine and know pretty well what it
must be like to have a heart. Yet, I’m not sure I would want one of my own. Oh I
know that without a heart a person cannot know the greatest happiness, this bonding
that occurs between humans. Yet, when the bond is broken there is such sorrow
and sadness. Look at Christine. When she and Ruth were together she was the
happiest person in the world, but now separated that great happiness has turned
to sorrow. Then she met Robert and thought she had a new friend, but now good
Robert is being taken from her. Can the painful experience of such separations
ever be forgotten? I don’t see how it can be. I don’t see Christine ever
regaining the exuberant happiness she had when she and Ruth lived together in
their idyllic hideaway far from the rest of the world.
So
if the greatest happiness cannot last, then why bother with it in the first
place? Allow me to use two perspectives taken from the philosopher psychologist William James: the tender-minded versus the tough-minded. It’s clear that the tough-minded person is no fool. Before he commits
himself, he evaluates the relationship, carefully considering all the possible
consequences. He knows that a person can enjoy many sources of pleasure and
satisfaction without ever being involved in a loving relationship. And if he
wants to get involved with someone, he does so, but keeps his distance in order
to remain emotionally uncommitted. If both parties can agree to put their
feelings aside, so to speak, it’s less likely that the eventual separation will
be painful. The tough-minded person understands that there is no reason for spending all those hours at the hospital with Robert who is asleep most of the time anyway.
That’s what hospitals are for. That’s why there are nurses, people who are
trained and paid to take care of the diseased and dying. They enable those
closest to the patient to continue on with their lives with as little
disruption as possible. It makes good sense. And what about Ruth? Has she been
writing Christine letters? Apparently not. There is no indication that
Christine has received a single letter from her. Christine has told us that Ruth is
capable of remaining detached from the world even as she fully participates in
it. Ruth probably knows that what she and Christine shared together is
finished, and people do have to get on with their lives—even sisters.
Being tender-minded, Christine is always looking backwards. That’s why she just can’t
let Robert die without getting involved. The tough-minded person has a point.
Being tender-minded just doesn’t pay in the long run. Still, don’t start thinking
that I’m going to quit on Christine. I’ll see this situation through. I may not
have a heart, but I’m not completely heartless. Besides we know there is
something to this business of caring so much for others, which I suppose is
what is meant by being tender-minded. I can’t know it as Christine does because
of my disembodied nature; nevertheless, I understand that the pain and sorrow
felt caring for someone—which is bound to come in many forms, such separation,
disease, and death—are the measures of the love one has for another. And I
believe they are truer measures of one’s love for another and the value of the
beloved than the elation experienced in young love.
The way Christine is now experiencing love is most often found among older people, who have over the
years seen loved ones suffer and die. It might have been Mr. Rieneau who said
that thirty years are required to fully understand love and the value of those
whom we love. Yet how can that be when he knew his wife Anna for only a few years, yet that was long enough for his love for her to endure a lifetime? I do not know. Love is
mysterious—perhaps so mysterious that it takes a lifetime to fully understand.
For myself I have only Christine, who knows me not, and I suppose all the other
characters of the story are my extended family. The care they cause in me must
be a symptom of love. Love like the rose has thorns, but unlike the thorns of
the rose those of love are unavoidable.
Whatever
the meaning of Christine’s love, it is as true as it is devoted. What else
could bring her to Robert’s bedside day after day, night after night? Certainly
there can’t be much pleasure in passing the hours sitting next to a dying man
in an institution that is so foreign to Christine’s temperament, which means
that there is something more to love than happiness—which Christine says is
revealed in grief, which apparently is a form of love created by loss. Love is
both a paradox and a mystery. The source of the greatest happiness can become
the source of the most painful sorrow. Yet in the most unbearable sorrow love
mysteriously endures. I wish I had a heart to give me greater insight into love.
But perhaps its happiness resides not in the heart—though it must use the
heart—but in the soul of the individual, that spiritual substance woven from
the remarkable intertwining of the heart and mind. It also seems to me that the deepest happiness is not found so much in feeling good but in
being good to those who are good. Sill, I’m uncertain and the mystery of love
remains.
From
such thoughts one can see the beginning and the end, the all and the nothing.
Perhaps that is why an abstraction like myself can almost feel the goodness of
Christine. Or am I blinded by my own words? Probably. But I do know that I like
this young woman who cares deeply for others. She may not be as clever as the tough-minded man, but I am glad nonetheless that I am in her story and not in
his.
An excerpt from The Girl and the Philosopher
