We have loved a living being — and it dies. We trusted someone — and he betrayed us … Moving forward, growing, loving is possible only at the cost of suffering, explains psychologist Scott Peck. The alternative to this imminent risk is not security at all, but the rejection of real life, unlife.
“If you go to church regularly, you probably noticed a woman in her forties or fifties who every Sunday, exactly five minutes before the start of the service, slips unnoticed to her usual place on a side bench in the farthest corner of the temple. As soon as the service ends, she silently but quickly moves to the doors and disappears before any of the parishioners leave the church. If you went with her (although this is hardly possible) and invited you to drink coffee together, which is served after Sunday service, then she would politely thank you, looking uneasily to the side, and, referring to urgent business, would rush away.
If you could follow her to find out what this urgent matter is, you would see her going straight home to her tiny apartment, where the windows are always curtained, unlocking the door and, entering, immediately locks it again on the key is not released this Sunday either. If you could continue to watch her, you would know that she does the work of a low-grade typist in a large office, where she silently receives her stack of sheets of manuscript, types it without errors, and just as silently returns the completed work. She eats her breakfast at her desk and has no friends. On the way home, she always stops at the same faceless supermarket and buys some groceries there, after which she disappears outside the door of her apartment until the next working day.
- “At the heart of the tension is a battle between two women for the love of a husband and son.”
On Saturday before evening, she herself goes to the nearest cinema, where films are changed once a week. She has a TV but no phone. Her mailbox is almost always empty. If you were able to enter into a conversation with her and tell her that her life seems so lonely, then she would answer that loneliness is pleasant for her. Did she ever have any pets? Yes, she had a dog that she loved very much, but the dog died eight years ago, and now no other can replace her.
Who is this woman? We do not know her spiritual secrets. We only know that her whole life is reduced to avoiding any risk, and in this striving she not only does not expand her «I», but has narrowed and reduced it almost to non-existence.
If you rush towards another human being, there is always the risk that that being will rush away, leaving you even more painfully alone than before. You fall in love with some living being — an animal, a plant — and it dies. You trust someone — and you can suffer severely. You depend on someone — and he can betray you. The price of love is pain, suffering. If one decides not to risk suffering, then he will have to do without many things — not to get married, not to have children, to deprive himself of ambition, friendship, the delights of sex — everything that makes life alive, full of meaning and meaning. It is possible to move or grow in any dimension only at the cost of suffering and joy. A full life is bound to be full of suffering. But the only alternative is not to live life to the fullest or not to live at all.
The essence of life is change, a carnival of development and decay. Choosing life and development, we choose change and inevitable death. The probable cause of the isolated, restricted life of that woman was an experience or series of experiences connected with death; it was so painful for her that she chose never to meet death again, even if she had to pay off with her life. While avoiding the experience of death, she had to avoid development and change at the same time.
The action of love, that is, the expansion of one’s own «I», requires either work (movement against the inertia of laziness) or courage (overcoming fear). When we expand our «I», it can be said that it enters a new, unfamiliar territory. Our «I» becomes new and different. We do things we are not used to doing. We are changing. The feeling of change, an unusual activity, an unfamiliar country where everything is different — it’s scary. So it has always been, and so it always will be. People deal with their fear of change in different ways, but this fear is inevitable if they really want change. Courage is not the absence of fear; it is action in spite of fear, overcoming the resistance generated by the fear of the unknown, the fear of the future. At some stage, spiritual growth, and therefore love, requires courage and inevitable risk.
For more details, see S. Peck, The Road Less Traveled (Sofia, 2008).