Love is so sudden, a lighting flash from no where. Or is it? Roger Housden in his book Ten Poems to Open Your Heart offers one poem by Wislawa Szymborska titled “Love at First Sight.” This poet won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996; at the time she told others that a poet lives to create by saying, “I don’t know.” This mystery space helps so much to notice the world and moments that seem to have a cause but truly arrive from a place we don’t know. Some call this Chance capital C. Malcolm Gladwell argues this in his amazing book Blink, Thinking Without Thinking. Just by arriving to life without knowing we can learn so much–instantly, in the blink of an eye.
What then of love at first sight? Star crossed lovers will remember their first meeting and recall in surprise how this was their first view of each other. But is this true? How would you know if perhaps on the bus, in the bank line, or at the bakery you had seen her before? Maybe. Hard to say. We don’t know. Szymborska laughs at these lovers, their blindness as to the first mystery meeting. She writes about the lovers in her poem:
They’d by amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.
Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.
The poem reminds me that I’m living from the “I don’t know” school of philosophy. That’s too neck-up actually. I just mean that each day will unfold in a way I cannot predict and so I simply attend the gatherings mostly to watch and see what will happen next; I’m insatiably curious to know but all bets are off.
Housden, for example, bumped into a woman who greeted him joyfully thinking he was someone else. They excused themselves once real recognition settled in. One year later the same woman booked ten days at a monastery where Housden had to stay by accident. Her name is Maria and two years later they were married.
This evening I went for a swim in the outdoor pool at the UCSF Baker Fitness Center and stared at the stars above. A bright crescent moon hung way up high too. Pool lights filtered through clear water and I felt bathed in moonlight and pool light; my swim felt easy and happy. The water always pulls me into an “I don’t know” mood where cognitive thought turns off and intuitive sensing washes in. I’m not thinking about anything in the pool suspended by water, grateful for the chance to take a load off my feet, so after when I’m dressed some of my best “ideas” surface. Yet I’m still unsure about love’s fire.
Housden helps me ruminate more lucidly about love at first sight in the following words:
“The poem reminds us that there is a season and a time for things that cannot be orchestrated. It’s like death–when it’s our time, we fall. Lovers need to ripen on the vine. You will know the right moment by the ease with which you fall into this next chapter of your life. It will require no effort, just an assenting to what wants to happen” (54). Perhaps then I will turn off the light now and simply say my prayers to close this day, sleep well, and wake to see what the next day brings. Good night.
