Dissecting love

Leontyne Bennet skillfully dissected in The Commonwealth of Lost Vanities (1969) Virgil's renowned quotation: "Love conquers all."
"For centuries upon centuries," he writes on p. 559, "we have been misinterpreting this famed trio of words. The uninformed masses breathlessly hold up this dwarfish phrase as a justification for snogging in public squares, abandoning wives, cuckolding husbands, for the escalating divorce rate, for swarma of bastard children begging for handouts in the Whitechapel and Aldgate tube stations - when in fact, there is nothing remotely encouraging or cheerful about this oft-quoted phrase. The latin poet wrote "Amor vincit omnia," or "Love conquers all."
He did not write, "Love frees all" or "liberates" all, and therein lies the first degree of our flagrant misunderstanding. Conquer: To defeat, subjugate, massacre, cream, make mincement out of. Surely, this cannot be a positive thing. And then, he wrote "conquers all" - not exclusively the unpleasant things, destitution, assassination, burglary, but all, including pleasure, peace, common sense, liberty and self-determination. And thus we may appreciate that Virgil's words are not encouragement, but rather a caveat, a cue to evade, shirk, elude the feeling at all costs, else we risk the massacre of thinmgs we hold most dear, including our sense of self."

(Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics)


Now why do I report this quote? Is it because I believe it's true? Well, yes, in a certain sense, it is true, love can destroy so much, love can hurt us so much and yes, we should be warned against it. Also, for all those centuries people have been aware of this very fact. And yet, they keep on loving and they keep on suffering. Why would they do that if they knew chances are that it will ache?

Because...

Because it's the reason for being. Love, and then I mean not only love for a woman or a man but also love for one's family, intense love for other people, whether they be friends or family or the person you will spend 'the rest of your life' with. Without this, and all the suffering that comes with it, life is nothing. Suffering without love is impossible, but neither is love without suffering, so the choice is ours. We can choose to be numb or we can choose to live and laugh, and cry.

(LB)