Love

[00:05.10]011. Love [00:10.40] Among the more curious questions that can be asked about love is this: [00:15.36]when one feels romantic love, [00:17.47]does he feel it in breaks, [00:19.24]with interruptions or changes, [00:21.53]or does he feel it continuously, [00:23.52]without interruption or change? [00:26.29]Poetry and song seduce one into thinking love continues without interruption. [00:32.73]“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds,” [00:36.69]wrote Shakespeare in one of his famous sonnets. [00:40.14]Love is “an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken, [00:44.85]”he continued. And Elizabeth Barret Browning wrote of her constancy to her husband Robert in such lines as this: [00:53.00]“What I do and what I dream include thee.” Some of the greatest operas also praise the ever [00:59.71]-lasting love by some heroes and heroines dying for it. In reality, love probably goes on with breaks and interruptions. [01:10.24]First, it is difficult to suppose that one can experience anything continuously. [01:16.67]Sleep interrupts wakefulness, and sleep itself is interrupted by dreams and nightmares. [01:23.45]The feeling one has for his lover during wakefulness may be blotted out or intensified by sleep. [01:31.77]In either case, the feeling changes. When one is awake, he cannot fix his eyes or his attention constantly on a single object. [01:41.49]He must blink, if nothing else. More likely he will look to something else for variety or from necessity. [01:50.28]His mind may turn to the stock market or he may become fascinated by the operation of a pile driver on his way to work. [01:58.95]His focus for much of his day is on work. As he closes the door to his office, [02:05.01]his thoughts may turn to his love, but sitting at his desk, his eyes fix on the print and figures there. [02:12.73]Pain and pleasure, either one, can distract a lover from concentrating on his love. [02:19.22]Pain calls everything to itself. One can forget one’s love for a period even over a stubbed toe. [02:28.00]The pleasure of too much food or drink can be totally absorbing. [02:33.43]The pleasure even of one’s lover may become boring periodically. [02:38.62]Often the greatest distraction is oneself. At times the preoccupation with self, [02:45.22]the worry over self, the development of self, the delight in self admit no other thought. [02:52.97]Lovely as love might be, one can neither live nor love continuously. [02:59.50]At best, a lover can only echo the words of the poet Ernest Dowson, and say, [03:05.41]“I have been faithful to thee in my fashion.” (source: http://online2.tingclass.net/lesson/shi0529/0009/9349/11.lrc)