Inbuddhist
Major
★
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2018
- Posts
- 2,065
He talks about how people try to find meaning through some fictional stories like religion, nation, being a part of something bigger than oneself, leaving something behind etc etc. Then he talks about why those copes still fail for most people to give meaning, and adds this
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For those who don’t trust any great chains, any future legacies or any collective epics, perhaps the safest and most parsimonious story they can turn to is romance. It doesn’t seek to go beyond the here and now. As countless love poems testify, when you are in love, the entire universe is reduced to the earlobe, the eyelash or the nipple of your beloved. When gazing at Juliet leaning her cheek upon her hand, Romeo exclaims ‘O, that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek!’ By connecting with a single body here and now, you feel connected with the entire cosmos. In truth, your beloved is just another human, no different in essence from the multitudes you ignore every day on the train and in the supermarket. But to you, he or she seems infinite, and you are happy to lose yourself in that infinity. Mystic poets of all traditions have often conflated romantic love with cosmic union, writing about God as a lover. Romantic poets have repaid the compliment by writing about their lovers as gods. If you are really in love with someone, you never worry about the meaning of life."
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For those who don’t trust any great chains, any future legacies or any collective epics, perhaps the safest and most parsimonious story they can turn to is romance. It doesn’t seek to go beyond the here and now. As countless love poems testify, when you are in love, the entire universe is reduced to the earlobe, the eyelash or the nipple of your beloved. When gazing at Juliet leaning her cheek upon her hand, Romeo exclaims ‘O, that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek!’ By connecting with a single body here and now, you feel connected with the entire cosmos. In truth, your beloved is just another human, no different in essence from the multitudes you ignore every day on the train and in the supermarket. But to you, he or she seems infinite, and you are happy to lose yourself in that infinity. Mystic poets of all traditions have often conflated romantic love with cosmic union, writing about God as a lover. Romantic poets have repaid the compliment by writing about their lovers as gods. If you are really in love with someone, you never worry about the meaning of life."
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