L'amour ideal

For my conversation group on Wednesday, I have this elderly couple as my instructors. I have a couple because Jean is blind and his wife helps him in his daily activities. He’s been blind since he was 20 years old. Jean and Cecile (?) have been married for 40 years. FORTY YEARS. That’s nearly twice how long I’ve been alive. And they’re very much still in love. It’s in the little things– the hand on the knee, the pat on the shoulder, the soft brushing of hands…It’s enough to make me want…It’s romantic. Like most French couples.

What is it? What is it about France that turns the atmosphere so …romantic? And how does this couple manage to remain so much in love, even after four decades? People have so much trouble staying together, much less happy together, for even a few months, but Cecile and Jean…they’ve made it work for forty years. In a way, that astounds me. Not just because of the duration of their marriage and the fact that they’ve made it work so well, but because even after all these years…their love for one another is so visible, indeed, even palpable. For some reason, seeing them makes me…wistful? It’s not that…it’s not that I wish I had that. It’s that…well, maybe it’s that I wish that other couples had that. When I look into her eyes as she looks at her children, I can see the maternal love exuding from her dark amber eyes. When I see her look at him… I don’t even know what’s in that gaze.

It’s good to know. It’s good to know that that kind of love is achievable, albeit rare. It’s good to see and experience firsthand because I guess it gives me hope. Idealistically speaking, of course I’d want that kind of love for myself. That clear unconditional, no bars held, outpouring of such evident affection for another person. But ideals aren’t necessarily reality. And love isn’t necessarily unconditional…nor forever. As sad as it seems, as jaded and cynical as it seems, that is the reality. The ideal is an ideal because it can never be achieved. Sure, we can come very close to making the fantasy a reality but there will also lack something. Is this sad? No, I don’t think so. Because…Well maybe it just demonstrates that even though as humans we can strive to obtain this amour ideal…we can’t. And the sole person who can is God. So no one can love us and we cannot love each other as much as God does. Of course that deviates from the initial point and argument.

In truth, humans just don’t have that capacity. Mais non…I lied. We do. It’s just hard to find it. To find and exercise that capability. And it’s just too hard to admit it. Because admitting it is scary. Because then we are forced to …acknowledge something. Something that gives up, in a sense, our own sense of identity, our sense of freedom. Because then we admit that we may be able to become so attached to another person, that we are willingly giving ourselves up to the whims and follies of a human who could and undoubtedly will bring hurt upon us. That we would allow such a thing to happen. And when it does, we would have only ourselves to blame– after all, we wanted it in the first place, n’est-ce pas?