The Commonality of C.S. Lewis, Eldridge Cleaver and Us?
“To love at all is to be vulnerable… If you want to make sure of keeping your heart intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless- it will change. It will not be broken- it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable… The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from love is Hell.”
C.S. Lewis as quoted by Thomas at Living Next Door To Alice
“Getting to know someone, entering that new world, is an ultimate, irretrievable step into the unknown. The prospect is terrifying. The stakes are high. The emotions are overwhelming. The two people are reluctant to really strip themselves naked in front of each other, because in doing so they make themselves vulnerable and give enormous power over themselves one to the other. How often they inflict pain and torment upon each other! Better to maintain shallow superficial affairs; that way the scars are not too deep. No blood is hacked from the soul.”
Eldridge Cleaver, Soul On Ice.
One fear. Two completely different lives. Same advice.
So should we follow the advice of these two distinctly different minds? Be unafraid of hurt so as to gain what may well be transient pleasure
8 comments:
They both sound so, oh I don't know, so afraid and bitter. Maybe the best way to approach affairs of the heart is to be terribly naive and tremendously hopeful.
I truly believe very few people crave absolute solitude -- because that's what an individual would end up with if they were to settle for "transient pleasures" over deeper, more meaningful connections.
I think this is why the Eastern mystics all preach that we should detach and rise above.
Thanks for posting this. I actually did an internet search when you mentioned Elridge Cleaver- I thought surely you must be talking about some other Elridge Cleaver. Nope- same one!
Of course there are tons of pithy quotes about loving others with abandon or keeping our hearts safe, but I like this one best from Helen Keller: 'Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.'
Of course, there's also this from Moonstruck, which summarizes the whole thing quite nicely: 'Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn't know this either, but love don't make things nice - it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die.
So there you have it. Love everyone you possibly can with reckless abandon and then die. Sounds good to me.
Love doesn't solve anything - it just makes the problems worth tackling.
The trick is to realize that when you make yourself vulnerable and as a result are hurt by someone who takes advantage of your vulnerability (and trust me, it will happen -- not everyone is a paragon) whether by design or by accident, this does not mark you as one-who-is-to-be-injured. It's a resiliency thing.
I have lived my life in three phases. In phase 1, I was wide open and was very sensitive and as a result was injured often. In phase 2, I had my heart in a steel box. No one got near me, and anyone who tried suffered greatly.
In phase 3, the box melted away, and I learned prudence and caution, but also the joy that can come from loving someone or something and being loved back.
Phase 3 is the best. For me.
What is life and living without opening oneself and taking the risk - whether it be love or something else. If we aren't open to feeling and experiencing, are we truly living?
The only way to live with opening yourself up to others is to accept that all of us are flawed. We need to recognize that we will be hurt sometimes,and we will hurt others. It just happens. Knowing this is great salve for the wounds, and makes it possible for us to be vulnerable again and again.
Great quotes. Thank you for sharing. Once you get over the age of 5, you're faced with this decision -- to love freely or not to love at all.
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