{"id":125747,"date":"2019-03-25T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-03-25T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=125747"},"modified":"2019-01-10T14:34:40","modified_gmt":"2019-01-10T14:34:40","slug":"the-difficult-balance-of-intimacy-and-independence-beloved-philosopher-and-poet-kahlil-gibran-on-the-secret-to-a-loving-and-lasting-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/03\/the-difficult-balance-of-intimacy-and-independence-beloved-philosopher-and-poet-kahlil-gibran-on-the-secret-to-a-loving-and-lasting-relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"The Difficult Balance of Intimacy and Independence: Beloved Philosopher and Poet Kahlil Gibran on the Secret to a Loving and Lasting Relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLove one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cWhat\u2019s the use of falling in love if you both remain inertly as-you-were?\u201d<\/em> Mary McCarthy asked her friend Hannah Arendt in their correspondence about love<\/a>. The question resonates because it speaks to a central necessity of love \u2014 at its truest and most potent, love invariably does change us, deconditioning our painful pathologies and elevating us toward our highest human potential. It allows us, as Barack Obama so eloquently wrote in his reflections on what his mother taught him about love<\/a>, \u201cto break across our solitude, and then, if we\u2019re lucky, [be] finally transformed into something firmer.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in the romantic ideal<\/a> upon which our modern mythos of love is built, the solidity of that togetherness is taken to such an extreme as to render love fragile. When lovers are expected to fuse together so closely and completely, mutuality mutates into a paralyzing codependence \u2014 a calcified and rigid firmness that becomes brittle to the possibility of growth. In the most nourishing kind of love, the communion of togetherness coexists with an integrity of individuality, the two aspects always in dynamic and fluid dialogue. The philosopher Martin Heidegger captured this beautifully in his love letters to Hannah Arendt<\/a>: \u201cWhy is love rich beyond all other possible human experiences and a sweet burden to those seized in its grasp? Because we become what we love and yet remain ourselves.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This difficult balance of intimacy and independence is what the great Lebanese-American artist, poet, and philosopher Kahlil Gibran<\/strong> (January 6, 1883\u2013April 10, 1931) explores with uncommon insight and poetic precision in a passage from his 1923 masterwork The Prophet<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Illustration by Julie Paschkis from Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People by Monica Brown<\/p><\/div>\n

By way of advice on the secret to a loving and lasting marriage, Gibran offers:<\/p>\n

Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
\nAnd let the winds of the heavens dance between you. <\/em><\/p>\n

Love one another but make not a bond of love:
\nLet it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
\nFill each other\u2019s cup but drink not from one cup.
\nGive one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
\nSing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
\nEven as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. <\/em><\/p>\n

Give your hearts, but not into each other\u2019s keeping.
\nFor only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
\nAnd stand together, yet not too near together:
\nFor the pillars of the temple stand apart,
\nAnd the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other\u2019s shadow.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Complement this particular portion of the wholly enchanting The Prophet<\/em><\/strong><\/a> with Virginia Woolf on what makes love last<\/a>, philosopher Alain Badiou on how we fall and stay in love<\/a>, Anna Dostoyevsky on the secret to a happy marriage<\/a>, Mary Oliver on how differences bring couples closer together<\/a>, and Joseph Campbell on the single most important factor in sustaining romantic relationships<\/a>, then revisit Gibran on the seeming self vs. the authentic self<\/a> and the absurdity of our self-righteousness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Brain Pickings<\/em> is the brain child of Maria Popova, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large obsessed with combinatorial creativity who also writes for <\/em>Wired<\/em> UK and <\/em>The Atlantic<\/em>, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. She has gotten occasional help from a handful of guest contributors<\/a>. Email: brainpicker@brainpickings.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 brainpickings.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cLove one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":125748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspirational"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}