[Music]
we are a practical species and when we
think of love it’s normal to focus on
the sort that goes places that’s mutual
that leads people to form couples and
perhaps one day households but the more
peculiar reality is that the greatest
share of humanity’s love stories have
unfolded in a direction ‘less form in
the recesses of the mind of only one
party it seems that we are in aggregate
at least committed first and foremost to
the unrequited version of love at any
point millions of love stories are
quietly being spun by one person while
the object of their adoration goes about
their business blithely unconcerned
someone watches someone else on a train
casts surreptitious glances at a
delegate at a conference carefully notes
of fellows shoppers manner in a grocery
store and the earth spins on undisturbed
unrequited lovers are easy to dismiss as
not far from pathetic if we were better
designed and a little saner we would of
course never develop feelings for people
who were not prepared to develop them
for us nor squander our days on desires
without logical or practical outcome but
looked at more benevolently
there is something hugely salutary and
Noble about our capacity to entertain
daydreams it is a feat to be able to
detonate powerful longings without
causing any inconvenience to other
people the ability to daydream is a
significant human achievement rather
than wishing that we stop doing so we
should be worried by what might happen
to us if we couldn’t daydream if we were
faced with the choice of either
accepting reality in all its barren
or else of barging into the lives of
other people with our unwanted desires
daydreaming is a vital and artful safety
valve mediating between resignation on
the one hand and uncontained effusions
on the other along the way unrequited
love provides us with an occasion to
exercise our aptitudes for optimism
after a few decades on the earth it’s
only too easy to start a hate our fellow
humans for their mediocrity selfishness
and idiocy but with our beloved in mind
we can for once give free rein to a
boundless generosity that a god or the
parent of a newborn might deploy we can
tell ourselves that we have found an
angel an exalted being on the basis of
nothing more than how wise their green
eyes lurk or how delicately they open
their yogurt for lunch
our verdicts are a delusional
exaggeration but given how much grounds
there is to despair the human experiment
perhaps a noble and forgivable one as
well it is the privilege of unrequited
love never to have to encounter the
disappointment that follows from contact
with reality we are not after accurate
knowledge of what it would be like to
coexist with this person we don’t really
want to know how they might behave in
the midst of a crisis at work or over a
holiday with their parents we’ve been
through enough such trials and the
results aren’t edifying so you’d have to
satisfy numbs any mind like I’ve eaten
some it’s fine right of course they
would
after a time in our arms proved less
than ideal and a little more like
everyone else we know we may be denied
intimacy but we are granted access to
something arguably far nicer boundless
hope we can attach to the form and
figure of the person we desire
everything we so want to be true about
you
and beings the beloved becomes the
repository of every desire for a
particular kind of intelligence which
temperament and out of the older we get
the more unrequited love brings us back
into contact with a passion and hope
that feels like an essential relief like
finding out we can still run or giggle
in meditating on the beloved we’re not
getting to know a real person we’re
gaining an insight into our ideals one
day perhaps in the not-too-distant
future we’ll be surrounded by a thought
police that will look inside our minds
at will and ruthlessly condemn us for
all the phantasmagoria that goes on in
them but for the moment at least we can
have any thought we like with impunity
we and the beloved can go on holiday to
Portugal can have four adorable children
together can dance in the town square
all night and the armed guards will
never know it’s hard to share with most
acquaintances quite what we’re going
through but those who do understand
become the targets of particular
gratitude a true friend will indulge our
folly and be generous to our melodramas
they will avoid the easy task of
censoring and abrading us they will have
enough of an impression of our basic
mental health to Shepherd us only gently
back to melancholic sanity turn to page
394 episodes of unrequited love forces
to develop a sense of humor about
ourselves it’s impossible to think too
well of who we are in their aftermath
unrequited love edges us inevitably
towards a basic humility we are at last
confirmed as truly ridiculous with any
luck no one gets hurt it’s just that for
a time the world seems a bit more
wondrous more exciting and more blessed
than usual
a natural impulse is to try to convert
our longings into something more
sensible either to start a proper love
affair or else to dismiss our dreams as
too silly to nurture maybe we should do
neither but rather let the unrequited
love exist on its own neither fully
grown up no wholly damnable neither
deeply horrible nor quite sane it’s just
the mind a very complicated machine
constrained by the narrowness of
existence turning its wheels tantalized
by a vision of happiness and sensing
quite rightly
and quite hopelessly that there could
have been so much more to life than
there ever really will be thank you for
watching remember to like the video and
please subscribe to our channel for more
our book sorrows of love helps us all handle the inevitable sorrows of love
we are a practical species and when we
think of love it’s normal to focus on
the sort that goes places that’s mutual
that leads people to form couples and
perhaps one day households but the more
peculiar reality is that the greatest
share of humanity’s love stories have
unfolded in a direction ‘less form in
the recesses of the mind of only one
party it seems that we are in aggregate
at least committed first and foremost to
the unrequited version of love at any
point millions of love stories are
quietly being spun by one person while
the object of their adoration goes about
their business blithely unconcerned
someone watches someone else on a train
casts surreptitious glances at a
delegate at a conference carefully notes
of fellows shoppers manner in a grocery
store and the earth spins on undisturbed
unrequited lovers are easy to dismiss as
not far from pathetic if we were better
designed and a little saner we would of
course never develop feelings for people
who were not prepared to develop them
for us nor squander our days on desires
without logical or practical outcome but
looked at more benevolently
there is something hugely salutary and
Noble about our capacity to entertain
daydreams it is a feat to be able to
detonate powerful longings without
causing any inconvenience to other
people the ability to daydream is a
significant human achievement rather
than wishing that we stop doing so we
should be worried by what might happen
to us if we couldn’t daydream if we were
faced with the choice of either
accepting reality in all its barren
or else of barging into the lives of
other people with our unwanted desires
daydreaming is a vital and artful safety
valve mediating between resignation on
the one hand and uncontained effusions
on the other along the way unrequited
love provides us with an occasion to
exercise our aptitudes for optimism
after a few decades on the earth it’s
only too easy to start a hate our fellow
humans for their mediocrity selfishness
and idiocy but with our beloved in mind
we can for once give free rein to a
boundless generosity that a god or the
parent of a newborn might deploy we can
tell ourselves that we have found an
angel an exalted being on the basis of
nothing more than how wise their green
eyes lurk or how delicately they open
their yogurt for lunch
our verdicts are a delusional
exaggeration but given how much grounds
there is to despair the human experiment
perhaps a noble and forgivable one as
well it is the privilege of unrequited
love never to have to encounter the
disappointment that follows from contact
with reality we are not after accurate
knowledge of what it would be like to
coexist with this person we don’t really
want to know how they might behave in
the midst of a crisis at work or over a
holiday with their parents we’ve been
through enough such trials and the
results aren’t edifying so you’d have to
satisfy numbs any mind like I’ve eaten
some it’s fine right of course they
would
after a time in our arms proved less
than ideal and a little more like
everyone else we know we may be denied
intimacy but we are granted access to
something arguably far nicer boundless
hope we can attach to the form and
figure of the person we desire
everything we so want to be true about
you
and beings the beloved becomes the
repository of every desire for a
particular kind of intelligence which
temperament and out of the older we get
the more unrequited love brings us back
into contact with a passion and hope
that feels like an essential relief like
finding out we can still run or giggle
in meditating on the beloved we’re not
getting to know a real person we’re
gaining an insight into our ideals one
day perhaps in the not-too-distant
future we’ll be surrounded by a thought
police that will look inside our minds
at will and ruthlessly condemn us for
all the phantasmagoria that goes on in
them but for the moment at least we can
have any thought we like with impunity
we and the beloved can go on holiday to
Portugal can have four adorable children
together can dance in the town square
all night and the armed guards will
never know it’s hard to share with most
acquaintances quite what we’re going
through but those who do understand
become the targets of particular
gratitude a true friend will indulge our
folly and be generous to our melodramas
they will avoid the easy task of
censoring and abrading us they will have
enough of an impression of our basic
mental health to Shepherd us only gently
back to melancholic sanity turn to page
394 episodes of unrequited love forces
to develop a sense of humor about
ourselves it’s impossible to think too
well of who we are in their aftermath
unrequited love edges us inevitably
towards a basic humility we are at last
confirmed as truly ridiculous with any
luck no one gets hurt it’s just that for
a time the world seems a bit more
wondrous more exciting and more blessed
than usual
a natural impulse is to try to convert
our longings into something more
sensible either to start a proper love
affair or else to dismiss our dreams as
too silly to nurture maybe we should do
neither but rather let the unrequited
love exist on its own neither fully
grown up no wholly damnable neither
deeply horrible nor quite sane it’s just
the mind a very complicated machine
constrained by the narrowness of
existence turning its wheels tantalized
by a vision of happiness and sensing
quite rightly
and quite hopelessly that there could
have been so much more to life than
there ever really will be thank you for
watching remember to like the video and
please subscribe to our channel for more
our book sorrows of love helps us all handle the inevitable sorrows of love
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