musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Quiet needs by sun and candle-light


I have to admit I’m puzzled. Does anybody really understand emotions? Some of them seem untetherable, others simply unpredictable, arising as they do from the fog of Life. And yet, as separate as states such as hate, anger, love, sadness and joy claim to be, they do share features such as spontaneity and lack of agency: I can no more control their birth or duration than I can tame their effects on me. Or am I alone in this? Have I, for all these many years, not learned to handle what others have managed -not been able to fit the lid on Pandora’s box?

Some emotions, of course, I would not mind; I could live with lasting joy; I could cocoon myself in the epiphany of Love if it were granted. But, alas, I have not learned the secret. I have only skimmed through the instructions that others may have memorized. In fact, I can’t even say I understand the words, let alone the reason for emotions.

There are some who contend that Love is far more complex than a mere emotion; it is a fundamental need much like air and sustenance.[i] Not only is it a form of biological bribery to tempt more social behaviour and raise our progeny, but, as Dr. Anna Machin, an evolutionary anthropologist at Oxford University, points out, it is also associated with ‘biobehavioral synchrony’: not only our motor behaviour, but also our metabolism and brain functions begin to mirror that of the object of our love. In the joy afforded by a child’s Teddy Bear, it is no longer just cloth, buttons, and stuffing.

So, is it actually settled? Is that really why Love evolved? Or should I even assume there is a reason for something as slippery as Love? Is it merely action/reaction -like, say a knee-jerk to a rubber hammer? Is it the pleasurable default for an emotion that I’m not at all certain exists in Nature merely for procreation or sociability? Do flies feel love when they sense the urge to reproduce? Do bacteria…? How would we know? I mean, how may faces does Love have? And anyway, perhaps emotions -or needs– like that are only multifaceted when seen through poetic eyes -filled with different shapes, arrayed with the flags of different cultures, different species; adorned with the variegated colours of patchwork quilts. I’m not certain any more -that is, if I ever was…

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways… I assume the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning had already figured it out, but perhaps she wrote her poem in the welcoming green of a different season than the one I find myself inhabiting; perhaps I should have read it ages ago when there were more leaves clinging to my branches. The heavy gift of years is more a time for declaring regrets and seeking forgiveness for past mistakes; a time for atonements that will probably gather dust in an attic somewhere; a time to reflect on what could have been -or maybe was- but now hides in the shadowy realm of memory. Is that Love too? I’ve forgotten already…

It’s not that I have loved and lost; I still feel love, but it’s more diffuse, more encompassing. What becomes of a smaller space that is no longer occupied -or, more perplexing still, what happens if the space itself is something else? If a bubble breaks, can what remains of it still claim any ownership of what it once contained? I sometimes wonder about that…

Perhaps the biggest mystery of all for me, however, is Love itself: Love unencumbered with CT scan pictures with their accompanying confusingly erudite explanations. No, I wonder about Love as a vibrant living experience, instead of just a wonderful memory. Now, I think I can just as easily remember the many things it wasn’t however, even if now the memory only follows me like a shadow on a cloudy day. It seems to me that although there once was anger, there was no hate; although there was sometimes laughter, there was no mockery; respect, of course, but no worship; forgiveness, yes, but… but blame could still not hide its fraying seams like a coat. I’m not very good at masquerades; my eyes have never understood disguise.

And anyway, it seems to me that Love cannot be sustained by reason, nor confined by definition: it simply is, or is not. For me, at least, it could not be forced; I couldn’t make myself fall in love. It is akin to the great unknown areas the ancient cartographers so often labeled Hic sunt dracones. One ceded control there; one simply waded into the raging waters with, well, trust, or more likely hope, then carried on.

Still, although love seems at times an unexpected gift, it is that very surprise, and serendipity that people welcome. There is also the numinous aspect of it that defies easy categorization. As one essayist put it, ‘To love is to exhibit a capacity beyond the capacity of sense, and even beyond that of reason. The depth of feeling of which we are capable is the ultimate expression of our humanity, and our relative helplessness before it is perhaps the essence of what makes us human.’[ii] In a sense, it defies agency, since in the throes of the unpredictable current, none of us is really totally in control; in the presence of the divine, one cedes agency.

But, I wonder if I am merely falling into the Browning trap of thinking that words, however adorned, can describe the ineffable; of assuming that Love must needs be directed to keep if from diluting, and that so targeted, it becomes something greater still. As if it suddenly becomes an agented synergy…

Or am I still deluding myself that I am able to analyse Love -if only by recall? By proxy, as it were. It is not a ‘thing’ that can be grasped, or worn like a favourite scarf found hanging in a closet; it cannot be turned on and off like water from a tap, nor drunk to satisfy a sudden thirst. It is, I seem to remember, much more than that.

I suspect that Love is something that can only be described in metaphor; glimpsed, if only indirectly, in the images of great poetry. I am reminded of one of my favourite poems, Sea Gulls, by E.J. Pratt whose words echo something more profound than the title might suggest: Love, too, sometimes has wings:

For one carved instant as they flew,
The language had no simile—
Silver, crystal, ivory
Were tarnished. Etched upon the horizon blue,
The frieze must go unchallenged, for the lift
And carriage of the wings would stain the drift
Of stars against a tropic indigo
Or dull the parable of snow.

Was Love, perhaps, like that…?

[i] Interview on CBC radio (Quirks and Quarks), February 10, 2022.

[ii] https://psyche.co/ideas/why-it-can-be-sublime-to-love-someone-who-doesnt-love-you-back?

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