Then the technologies developed during the Second World War blew
the last gates off the hinges. For the first time in history individuals
could survive alone--with far less labor than their ancestors. Now, in
the United States and much of Europe, about 12 percent of the population
lives alone. Another 20 percent, in America at least, are single-parent
families. This is a reality unparalleled in human history. Men and women
are, for the first time ever, working and entertaining themselves,
unchaperoned, unrestricted by law or custom. We're inundated, in our
homes, cars, and on the streets, by tales, songs, and advertisements
coaxing us toward sex and passion.
And now we marry as a celebration of the very passions that all the
traditional cultures warned us against. Thirty thousand years of warnings
have been demolished in less than a century We are now allowed to change
in ways--and at rates of speed--that our ancestors assured us would drive
us mad. We are asking a lot of ourselves if we expect to find new ways to
handle this in just a couple of generations. (Now the peasantry appear on
the daytime talk shows. Watched avidly by their fellow creatures, they
talk about very little but that our ancestors were right and that passion
is making them nuts.)
Where does this leave you and I? In a situation where (as long as
we're not too noisy about it, and sometimes even then) anything goes.
Anything. And not many are strong enough to both protect and transcend
their own boundaries (the two contradictory necessities of love) when
everything is in flux, when there are no reference points and no
sustaining traditions.
You talk to yourself, talk to your friends, talk to your therapist,
buy self-help books, watch Oprah, take Prozac. Or you read poetry, go to
the ballet, see art films, scan essays like this one, do old-fashioned
things like drink and smoke cigarettes. You're looking for comfort,
insight, a clue--some way to reconcile your feelings and your life. The
extraordinary thing is that very rarely does anybody tell you that
looking for both passion and security in the same place is a very new
human project. Love, circa 1997, is a huge experiment. We don't see
ourselves as experimenters, however. We see ourselves as just "folks"
trying to get along; nevertheless we've been drawn willy-nilly into a
social experiment on a scale so great, and in ways so pervasive, that we
hardly perceive it. We're trying to reconcile opposites--passion and
security--that have never been reconciled before.
Again I think of my father, falling madly in love at the age of 77,
and enduring a difficult breakup at the age of 81. I see him as humanity
in miniature, a metaphor for us all. Most Americans live well into their
seventies now, and love can still take them by surprise. Apparently the
soul doesn't age as our minds and bodies do. (I have two other friends
almost Papa's age who have fallen just as hard as he did.) Marvelous,
isn't it? The experiment isn't over till we're dead.
What are we to do with this situation? Anyone who tries to provide
a definitive answer to so profound and rending a dilemma is liar, fool,
profiteer, or all three. The greatest irony is, if passion suddenly grips
you, you'll try to offer that answer with your life itself. Like me, like
anyone, you'll want to reconcile, in yourself, with your lover, the
entire history of this paradox. All I can do is remind you, in a swift
and crude way, what an enormous task you're taking on when you love--what
a fantastic dare!
For me, that's a comfort. But remember, I'm a romantic, and when I
take a dare and fail I don't feel nearly as cheated, deprived, and
disappointed as I do when I'm full of expectations that aren't fulfilled.
The very nature of a dare is that the odds are against you, and some of
us find that exhilarating. All the reassurances, insights, and self-help
books in the world aren't going to change the odds. What's required of us
is what the poet Ted Hughes described as "the simple animal courage of
accepting the odds."
Late last night, as I was writing this essay, my father called.
Papa seemed calmer than he'd been since the breakup. His voice, raspy
with emphysema, sounded gentle and centered. I said, "Papa, I'm trying to
write about love." I didn't tell him that he was, in effect, the star of
my essay; I like to surprise him that way. I've written about him before,
and he doesn't seem to mind--he's even taken a kind of shy pride in being
thought interesting enough, by his eldest son, to be the subject of an
essay.
"Love," he said, "that's a wonderful subject to write about." Then
he added, wistfully: "If only it were understood!"
PHOTO (COLOR): "LOVE IS A DANGEROUS NECESSITY."
CHARLES MINGUS
PHOTO (COLOR): "SHE LOVED ME FOR THE DANGERS I HAD PASSED, AND I
LOVED HER THAT SHE DID PITY THEM."
SHAKESPEARE
BY MICHAEL VENTURA
Michael Ventura's biweekly column appears in The Austin Chronicle.
His novel, The Death of Frank Sinatra, was recently published by
Holt.
Tags:
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coincidences,
down to earth,
enduring love,
immigrant,
little kid,
love,
marriage,
memories,
nineteenth century,
nuts,
odds,
one fine day,
passion,
potatoes,
relationship,
second wife,
security,
shy smile,
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