Thursday, April 24, 2008

from Notes on Love and Courage

by Hugh Prather

"We need other people, not in order to stay alive, but to be fully human: to be affectionate, funny playful, to be generous. How genuine is my capacity for love if there is no one for me to love, to laugh with, to treat tenderly, to be trusted by?  I can love an idea or a vision, but I can't throw my arms around it.  Unless there is someone to whom I can give my gifts, in whose hands I can entrust my dreams, who will forgive me my deformities, my aberrations, to whom I can speak the unspeakable, then I am not human, I am a thing, a gadget that works but has no ashes."

I used to think this was the very definition of what my husband should be.  What an onerous thing it is to lay that burden upon one individual.  Even the writer knew at the outset we need other "people" (plural).  This captures the sum total of every loving relationship I have - no one person can be all this to me.  They are the stars in my universe that bring me moments of peace in the everyday din.

1 comment:

  1. you are right -- we should never rely on one person only to fulfill our need for love. thank you for sharing this perspective.

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