In an article in the New York Times, the writer Jonathan Franzen wrote that “the prospect of pain generally, the pain of loss, of breakup, of death, is what makes it so tempting to avoid love and stay safely in the world of liking. And yet pain hurts but it doesn’t kill. When you consider the alternative — an anesthetised dream of self-sufficiency, abetted by technology — pain emerges as the natural product and natural indicator of being alive in a resistant world. To go through a life painlessly is to have not lived”.
I believe that the capacity to connect deeply with another person and to find meaning in this connection despite the potential pain involved is the only way to engage the self, our emotions, our will and to keep our desires alive. A passionate commitment reveals who we are to ourselves and to the world.
The late American psychotherapist Sheldon B Kopp put it beautifully when he wrote:
“Sometimes it seems to me that in this absurdly random life there is some inherent justice in the outcome of personal relationships. In the long run, we get no more than we have been willing to give”.