Prof. Sexson made an offhand comment the other day on our modern day adaptation of the power of love in the form of Cupid. We have taken the god himself and transformed him into a "fat baby with wings" in Prof. Sexson's words. What an idea!
What role does love play in our society? In every part of the world, love is a mainstay of creative thought and the focus of most, if not all of our energies. Yet, we have no idea what it is or even how to truly define it. Love is something that shows itself in many forms, something ephemera,l and it defies our pitiful attempts to place it in some sort of sterilized box for safekeeping. It moves us....beyond the limits of acceptable conduct....and with only the slightest touch. By transforming the youthful god of tricks and dreamlike rapture into that of a commercialized baby figure with fat rolls and disproportionate wings, we attempt to create some distance from this power, the power of love. We like to fool ourselves into thinking that we actually succeed in this.
Few people would ever admit to being fools in love; those that do are rarely fools as they know more of the true nature of love than most who claim to retain some small semblance of control, yet that is what we all are. Simple fools. We say that love is blind. Rather, we cannot know this concept in its entirety. Anything we cannot explain we then qualify. With platitudes such as these we escape culpability for our choice of companion, our mirror in this life. "Love is blind," we say and say no more about it so as not to have to examine ourselves fully in the light of truth. But there is so much more that needs to be said! Love is not blind simply because we are blind to its meaning.
Sadly, we like to think of ourselves as truly modern, unable to be fooled by such silly, naive concepts of love and beauty, honor or integrity. Those are the dreams of bygone eras, the souls of greater men than us perished in the black abyss of time. I am taking another English class this semester, and what I have found in our class discussions on certain pieces of literature was a revelation to me. Every piece that affected me the most, for the author spoke of nobility, of integrity of spirit, every such piece was ridiculed and picked apart in class days after I had scanned the final lines. The knight is an antiquated, unrealistic concept. The love between brother knights is homoerotic and nothing more. The author seems narrow-minded. The hero is a wimp. The glorification of this hero is but the implementation of European ideals on the savage mind. He's not really that courageous, there's just no other way he can be.
These were some "insights" I gained from my peers during these sessions of outright skepticism and derisive criticism.
I leave these classes feeling worn and...disappointed.
Far from being naive, I have seen as well. I have witnessed the degradation of mankind in so many venues and in so many ways. Yet...somehow, I continue to believe in the heroic potential of the human spirit. I continue to believe in a version of man who lives with integrity and strength of self. I continue to believe in a passionate love that leaves one senseless to the condemnation of the world. I believe in ultimate truth, though it may not be conceivable as we are now. I believe...in man.
Yet these people, these masses, for I cannot term them truly individual when they lack the courage to embrace life itself, pitifully and regrettably seek to distance themselves from their own ideal. The best version of who they themselves could be stands directly before them, waiting to be recognized and sought after, yet they continue to deny, efface, and condemn him. With platitudes and off-color remarks, fat babies and sissy knights, they turn away from the power of that sight, the power of that other world. This world, devoid of qualifications and other injustices.
Psyche held the absolute power of love, devoid of such qualifications, in her very "soul". By seeking some sort of contextual definition in the form of a beautiful shape, she sought to gain some power over her situation, over love. For this she was punished, not because she saw Eros in his fullest form, but because she tried to distance herself from, to give a name to some great force that must only be embraced with wild abandon.
In the same way, we must embrace our lives without those self-imposed boundaries and petty fears. Give up fat babies and live in the glorious presence and power of something greater than yet contained in ourselves...in our souls.
