This is one of the joys and challenges of love: the more skillfully you love someone, the more held, encouraged, and accepted they feel, the more they change.
I love the ideology of love in this article, not describing love as comfort, or as emotional attunement in the usual sense, but as a transformation of both sides.
Even deep love doesn’t guarantee convergence, it can just as easily reveal divergence more clearly over time, and I love how the author treats it as 'value-expansion'. The risk of growing apart is always real, but so is the possibility that another person’s becoming enlarges your capacity to perceive reality itself. Love allows you to see what you could not have generated alone.
I love how you weave both the abstract and artistic with the practical:
> She’d kept talking, as I was thinking about this, so I told her to be silent for a moment so I could process what she’d said; I wanted to give myself the time to notice if there was any subtle part of what she talked about that interested me or confused me.
My experience of reading your essays is as an exploration of a deeper (or higher) self, but firmly set on the real without being floaty.
So beautiful and such wisdom in this essay, thank you. I love the point you make about aspiring. I believe this requires opening up toward something, which in turn means letting go of some conception of yourself, your own interests, softening some part of what you might believe (or think you believe). I notice that this is seemingly easier for some than others, and wonder why that is. Also, this essay has made me profoundly curious about Johanna's garden.
I have indeed also found that, if you engage something someone loves with just enough curiosity, no matter how you felt about it before, it’ll be hard not to come away with at least a deep appreciation of it, and like you described, new eyes with which to see the world.
Here for an early comment!
“When I look I am seen, so I exist.”
I love the ideology of love in this article, not describing love as comfort, or as emotional attunement in the usual sense, but as a transformation of both sides.
Even deep love doesn’t guarantee convergence, it can just as easily reveal divergence more clearly over time, and I love how the author treats it as 'value-expansion'. The risk of growing apart is always real, but so is the possibility that another person’s becoming enlarges your capacity to perceive reality itself. Love allows you to see what you could not have generated alone.
Such a beautiful piece!!
I love how you weave both the abstract and artistic with the practical:
> She’d kept talking, as I was thinking about this, so I told her to be silent for a moment so I could process what she’d said; I wanted to give myself the time to notice if there was any subtle part of what she talked about that interested me or confused me.
My experience of reading your essays is as an exploration of a deeper (or higher) self, but firmly set on the real without being floaty.
So beautiful and such wisdom in this essay, thank you. I love the point you make about aspiring. I believe this requires opening up toward something, which in turn means letting go of some conception of yourself, your own interests, softening some part of what you might believe (or think you believe). I notice that this is seemingly easier for some than others, and wonder why that is. Also, this essay has made me profoundly curious about Johanna's garden.
I have indeed also found that, if you engage something someone loves with just enough curiosity, no matter how you felt about it before, it’ll be hard not to come away with at least a deep appreciation of it, and like you described, new eyes with which to see the world.
Beautiful
This was lovely. What a rare connection. Is this evolving intellectual intimacy? It’s so beautiful you found each other.
until now even didn't realize how much i wait for your every new article 😅
and thanks!