A few days over two months ago I wrote a post about love. Today thoughts about that topic have come back. I had a publisher of books of poetry contact me about the possibility reviewing a book. The description sounded good even though my background is in science and education I said I would give it a try. I’m still trying to get through it not because it is a difficult read, but because it is a difficult topic at my stage in life. I don’t see any signs that my wife or I are soon going to be leaving this life, but I know that can change in a hurry. Even if things go as long as her parents or my grandmother were in this life, we are definitely closer to the end than to the beginning. The day may be near when one of us will be without the other. It is a set of emotions I need to face and this book takes me there. Once I finish I will write a review.
The other book I have finished. I was asked to read a book in advance of its release. I will be writing some reviews soon about it, one I will put on here. I sent the author my impressions today. He mentioned he was considering a different relationship between a couple of the characters but thought the kind of love he was thinking of would weaken the character of the heroine. As I’ve said, I’m not well versed in writing terms and methods. One review of my blog said the reviewer liked my conversational style of writing. It has that style as I don’t know how to do other than record what I would say to someone here talking to them about what ever the topic is. It is not something I do consciously to get a certain result. I hope I understood the book’s author correctly, that it would weaken the focus of the story on one character by adding details of a supporting character. I cannot think of the good love I spoke about in the previous post as weakening someone. The selfish, possessive thing some people call love could distract the other person and weaken them, but not the selfless love that I feel so strongly myself for some people.
That author is pretty well known so I’m not mentioning who it is to keep the focus on the point of this post. I think that is what he meant about the supporting character’s love could weaken the main character. I can’t see this good love from someone else weakening a person in real life. The person in the position of the supporting character would only be doing things to strengthen the loved one. So if this were the only love we could feel everything would be great.
One of the things I’ve learned, in over six decades in the world, is life is never that simple. One thing I learned in my training and small amount of work in engineering is that making a simpler model is the way to solve engineering problems. It can help discussions of complex human problems but it must always be in mind that people don’t become those simpler models. We can’t expect them to feel only that kind of love. If we as a culture can promote it more people will be more likely to cultivate it in their lives, but that selfish love will also be felt from time to time.
As I think of the end of this existence coming for me, up until this other book, the book of poems, I’ve always figured I would die before my wife. Now reading poems of how that feels I may wish for her to go first so I have to deal with those emotions. If the poems are an indication, those emotions can be very, very strong. No matter how much we try to celebrate the life of the person who has left us, we will also feel that loss of them no longer being here.
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