Beloved

After years of postponing a personal promise, I started reading Man’s Search For Meaning. I’m in the middle of it now while on a flight to visit someone I love. Maybe I’ll have more reflections about the book, but for now I’m getting emotional over a passage detailing the power of love.

In the passage, Mr. Frankl remembers a somber march during which a neighbor issues a performative proclamation: “If our wives could see us now!” No further conversation ensued, yet the statement sufficed to occupy his thoughts about Mrs. Frankl for hours.

It’s occupying my thoughts as well.

What is love?

You can decide the definition for yourself but here I go … I’m an open person, increasingly so in recent years, but I don’t think I am an open book. Frankl-y, I’m not exactly sure what people mean when they use the term: open book. Perhaps they say it to mean a person who purposefully or accidentally behaves in a clear and repeatable manner: you get what you see!

Or perhaps being an open book means a person’s pages are available to you, but YOU must decide to read.

Who benefits from reading THEIR pages: what’s in it for me?

Why are their pages important: I have enough on my plate right now.

When are their pages important to me: I need something now.

What if they want you to read their pages, but you don’t?

How can you love someone if you choose not to read their pages?

I don’t believe in reading every page of a book, especially if you don’t like the book. Just stop! Naval has a famous diatribe about reading books promiscuously, ethically non-monogamously and voraciously. Some books (calling Mr. Gladwell) need not be read cover-to-cover in order to get the message. If you blink you will still get the essence.

But

If you skip pages does it still count as reading the book?

Who is keeping count? Perhaps the book is, but you’ll never know.

How many pages must YOU read to say it has been read?

If the book could talk back to you, would it agree with your assessment?

Love is a gradient

The love we have for others is dynamic and variable from beloved to beloved. I believe our love principles are static, or at best extremely difficult to change.

We have different capacities for love just as we decide to read some, none or all the pages of a book; even ones we dislike.

Some people don’t enjoy reading.

The rest of us can still love reading without reading all the books, but how can we love a book we haven’t read?

Have you ever read a book and thought: it feels like this book is speaking to ME?

If so, do you accept the responsibility to read and love all pages?

Is the book always there when you need it; providing comfort, sometimes wisdom; is this love?

Does it even matter which book it is as long as it’s around? The Japanese have a term: Tsundoku, the practice of accumulating and proudly displaying books you never read.

A man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.

- Viktor Frankl