I knew your husband would die sooner than later, being a hopeless smoker all his life, having had already a heart attack, in addition to other health problems. You knew it as well, and so did he. He seemed to be more worried about leaving you behind than about his own death.
And then happened the unavoidable, and it happened precisely when I was on a business trip abroad. I could not even be with you at the funeral. This hurt so much, that I felt even more sorrow for you. The two of you had been so close to each other that I could not imagine you living without him.
I tried giving you my caring words by phone, but I was aware of the emptiness of the words, even though I really meant them. I knew I could not really “share” your pain. How could I possibly feel what you felt? I was an outsider to your sorrows, an intruder to your pain.
When I finally returned home and immediately went to see you, I was shocked by your bent shoulders and the suffering lines on your face. You came up the stairs to meet me, and we stood in the hallway looking at each other’s face. We talked quietly, with long silent pauses. You kept telling me that you hadn’t seen me for such a long time, and I heard in your words a silent complaint: “Come closer, touch my pain. I know your intentions are good, but you are so far…”
I wished I knew how to abolish the distance between us. I wished to take upon me some of your pain. But I knew that your pain was only yours, and that I would always be excluded from it. You were you and I was I.
I took you in my arms; I wanted to give you my warmth. Your deep brown eyes frightened me, looking out for my help. They reminded me of my responsibility towards you, towards everybody, towards the world. They reminded me of my own fragility and need.
Slowly I recalled Solovyev’s words about the power of Love:
“Love is important not as one among other feelings, but as the transfer of all our interest in life from ourselves to another, as the shifting of the center of our personal lives.”
A wave of love surged from inside me, a boundless, desperate love to you, my dearest friend. And for a small powerful moment I felt myself crossing the impossible distance between us, and being with you, being you yourself.
And now I understood, fully and completely, what Solovyov wanted to say about the mission of love.
From THE MEANING OF LOVE (1894), by Vladimir Solovyov:
A human being, by being this individual and not another individual, may become All only by abolishing in his consciousness the internal boundary which separates him from another human being. “This one” may become the “All” only together with others. Only together with others can an individual realize his absolute significance, and become an inseparable and irreplaceable part of the universal whole, an independent living original organ of the absolute life…
The meaning and worth of love is that it forces us to acknowledge, with all our being, the absolute central significance of another person, which, because of the power of our egoism, we are conscious of only in our own self. Love is important not as one among other feelings, but as the transfer of all our interest in life from ourselves to another, as the shifting of the center of our personal lives.
Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900) was a Russian thinker. In this book he reflects on the universal integration of humanity with the All.
Text 4 at http://dphilo.org/texts/
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