To Be Or Not? What a Question

In his essay, “The Crack Up,” F. Scott Fitzgerald contended that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

The quote, taken alone, seems to indicate that smart people are on a level above everyone else. But Fitzgerald was being ironic, because no one is able to hold two opposed ideas and still be able to function without going a bit crazy.

In psychological circles this is called cognitive dissonance, and to a large extent, we all fall into it. In fact, it seems like the politics of these times could best be described as a universal cognitive dissonance. Your guy may be an actual crook, but you see him as a saint. The opposition always looks evil, but in truth has some very fine qualities.

For those of you getting a little panicky that this has somehow veered into political discourse, rest assured that is not the course I am taking. While I have my opinions on the situation, I find little interest in writing about them.

No, the subject today is much more complex and much more susceptible to cognitive dissonance. I speak, of course, about romantic love.

Not unlike just about anyone else, I probably think about love too much. Perhaps I go a little too far in my thinking, but that’s only because, after nearly 60 trips around the sun, I still find myself as confused about it as when I first made its discovery as a fourth-grader who fell in love with a girl with light brown hair and an upturned nose named Amy.

I can tick off the names of those who came after, but I’ll not bore you. As I matured, I became somewhat of a hopeless romantic, imbued with the knowledge that love was the most wonderful thing a human being can have. I have listened to thousands of pop songs extolling its virtues and believed every one of them. I’ve watched movies and television shows that told me that without love, we are nothing. I’ve read books and stories about the quest for love. Think for a minute, the violence in just about every action movie ever made is motivated by love.

Nothing is more noble than a love you are willing to die, or kill, for. Helen had a face that launched a thousand ships, King Arthur had Guinevere, Romeo had Juliet and John Wick lost the puppy given to him by his dearly departed wife.

Our literature is littered with the bodies of men who had made a grand gesture in the name of love. Lord knows, I bought into that and have made a few grand gestures of my own. (I never killed anyone, just for the record.)

You have to read to the end of the stories, though. Love always ends, and it’s usually painful. In real life, with a little experience and observation, it’s easy to see that love is nothing but a painful trap designed to tie our existence to another person.

I don’t really like myself much when I think about what I just wrote in that last paragraph. It’s very cynical and have spent a life trying to be optimistic. This is where my cognitive dissonance rears its ugly head.

I know the wonders of love. I love and I am loved. I also know that pain that comes with love. I know my own experiences with that pain, but what comes to mind is observations of the pain others go through. There are two people close to me who deal daily with the pain of love and I wonder at how they deal with the trap they are in.

First a man with a wife who has struggled with bipolar disorder for 40 years. He told me recently about the things he does for her to get her to see through the haze that is her mind. He uses a simple trick to help her – a pair of hospital slippers purchased at Walmart. With a Sharpie he writes on one “I love you,” and on the other he writes, “I am here for you.” Then he tells her that any time she gets confused to just look down and see what he has written.

I cry as I write this because that is the most beautiful thing about love. But I also am angry because this loving man has spent the whole of his adult life taking care of someone. His happiness has never been a consideration.

“I love my wife,” is his answer when I ask him how he does this.

Second, a woman who has been a loving wife for more than 40 years. Twelve years ago, her husband was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s and life changed for them. Medically speaking, Alzheimer’s is an insidious disease reducing a human being to a mere shell. What gets lost in all that, though, is the impact of those left to take care. The remaining spouse now must take on all the day to day duties of a household. The spouse also has to become a caregiver, a duty that becomes progressively more difficult.

Along with those caregiving duties, you can throw in a good measure of guilt. Guilt for not being a good enough caretaker, guilt when the spouse is placed in a facility, and guilt for trying to find a little joy and relief somewhere in the world. You also throw in a bit of anxiety as you deal with the fact that your world has become focused on a disease while everyone else goes on living. Family holidays are impossible to enjoy with the specter of impending death hovering over the proceedings.

“I love my husband,” is her answer when I ask how she does this.

That is what love does to you. It traps you. It makes you give up part of yourself in service of someone else.

In his essay, Fitzgerald’s answer to this sort of cognitive dissonance is to make a clean break, “something you cannot come back from; that is irretrievable because it makes the past cease to exist.” In a way, we’ve adopted that attitude with divorce laws that make it easy to walk away, to make a clean break.

Try as he might, though, Fitzgerald could never make a clean break. He may have thought he held a first-rate intelligence to hold two ideas at once and still function, but the evidence suggests that he didn’t do a very good job at the functioning part.

Although Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at age 44, it was his years of alcohol abuse that probably did him in physically. Mentally, we can assume that his cognitive dissonance had a profound effect.

As for me, I know that love is a trap and will only end in pain. I know that love is a many splendored thing. Knowing this, I continue to love and I continue to let people love me.

Some traps are just meant to be walked into.