Sunday, March 3, 2013

That ambiguous, uncertain feeling




“Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).”
-        Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I love the above text. Kundera puts it with such clarity. He writes about two very different desires - one sexual and the other less so. The need to mate is more primal, so to speak. To share a bed with someone and to just let your eyelids close leading to a state of rest to your ever wandering mind is something else. On similar notes, being in love with someone is different from loving someone. To experience love in its various forms is when you would find yourself open to how to you truly feel about things. An intense rush of love towards someone is not the same as the joy and bliss you’d get from being in love with someone. And to be able to distinguish the two when encountered simultaneously, is when melancholy makes itself known.