musingsonwomenshealth.com

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

Doubt thou the stars are fire


What am I doing, thinking about love at my age? And don’t get all shmaltzy about that; don’t remind me that without love, there is no hope, no future, no point in going on…

It’s not that I’ve never considered those arguments, but I’ve lived through them all, and am at peace with myself and the world. I don’t feel the same need of tangibility that I did in my youth; perhaps my feelings have morphed into a more agapic sort of mindset: selfless, unconditional (hopefully) and unattached; certainly not particularly reward-driven.

Of course, there are many forms of love I suppose; I don’t claim to know them all. And anyway it wouldn’t make sense to itemize them like a shopping list in case I don’t find them all as I wander along whatever aisles in which I find myself. Love is, well, love. Variations of the feeling are just that: flowers opening; unlike brands, there are no patents on its shapes.

Think of trees; their roots are never identical, and yet they can survive in most soils. Love is a forest of survivors; proof that how it exists is less important than that it does. There is no reason to wonder why; no need to dissect its petals; no need to unearth the tree…

Still, you may wonder why an octogenarian still feels the need to wonder about wonders; I’m not sure I can answer that, except to suggest that my time is running out -as it is for us all. But the most recent trigger was seeing a photograph of a painting by the 19th century artist Aimé Morot; it was in an article about Love on one of the apps on my phone.[i] The painting, ‘The Good Samaritan’ was a depiction of a biblical parable I hadn’t thought about since my childhood and I was immediately recaptured. Perhaps it was the way the way the Samaritan was depicted, or maybe the way his actions were recapitulated in the article which made me stop and think about my own journey… ‘The Samaritan was immediately moved and rushed over, hoisted the man onto his donkey, took him to a nearby inn and stayed up with him all night, nursing him back to life. The next morning he paid the innkeeper two denarii -Roman silver coins- and offered to pay the tab for anything else the man might require as he recuperated.’

Would I do that? Would I even stop to help? I’d like to think I would -I’d like to think I have… although to be truthful, I can’t bring any examples to mind. Still, wouldn’t requiring proof diminish the act? Debase the sentiment?

Remember that famous philosophical thought experiment, the ‘Trolley Problem’? In it, a runaway trolley is on a track which will kill a number of people down that track, but a bystander standing by a switch can intervene and alter the route so it kills just one person on a different track. What should he do? What does Love tell us about the correct decision, if anything? Do numbers matter? Is love simply a Benthamian utilitarian consideration?

And what about empathy? Is it really true, as the psychologist Paul Bloom argues in his book Against Empathy, that such emotions ‘do poorly in a world where there are many people in need and where the effects of one’s actions are diffuse, often delayed, and difficult to compute’?

So, was the apocryphal Samaritan wasting his time? His love…? After all,  he acted in ‘an emotional, deeply personal and almost absurdly inefficient matter. Those two denarii were a weighty sum – they could have been used to beef up security on the road and prevent other robberies, rather than save a single man. Nor did the Samaritan off-load the injured man onto a local healer. He cared for him directly, the way someone might sit with a gravely ill family member.’ But should we really subject Love to a cost-benefit analysis? I worry about these things…

Do you remember Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116?

Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

I’d like to think that is the case, even if I can’t remember sailing those seas. I’d like to hope I have, though -if never so thoughtfully expressed. But, in the end, as Cassius says in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, ‘It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves’. Or to go back to one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, Hamlet: he tells Ophelia ‘Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.’

I want to think that is the case…

[i] https://theconversation.com/gut-wrenching-love-what-a-fresh-look-at-the-good-samaritan-story-says-for-ethics-today-247988?

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