We’ll, it’s Valentine’s Day. We celebrate love. As for my own two-cents worth of contribution to this entire celebration, I would like to share a reproduction of a letter that a man wrote to his beloved on the day that she was wed to another:
My everdearest XXXXX,
By the time you open this, you’ll be moments away from walking down the aisle. I will say a prayer for you that you may find meaning in what you’re about to do.
Sometimes I wonder why we ever met. Is it only for me to find fleeting happiness but experience eternal pain? Is it only for us to find a true love but then lose it again? Or is it because there’s a bigger plan for the two of us?
I hope that you have experienced true happiness with me. I have done everything humanly possible to love you. And today, as you make your vows . . . I make my own vow to YOU!
I will love you for the rest of my life. I loved you from the first time I laid eyes on you, to the time we spent together, up to the final moments of your single life. But more importantly, I will love you until the life in me is gone and until we are together again.
Do not worry about me! I will be happy for you. I have enough memories of us to last me a lifetime. Always remember though that in my heart, in my mind and in my soul, YOU WILL ALWAYS
. . . AND THE WONDERFUL THINGS YOU DO!
BE MINE . . . . AND MINE ALONE, and I WILL ALWAYS BE YOURS AND YOURS ALONE!
I LOVE YOU FOREVER, I LOVE YOU FOR ALWAYS. AS LONG AS I’M LIVING MY TWEETIE YOU’LL BE!”
Eternally yours,
XXXX
While the letter might have elicited varied reactions from its readers, prompting them to pass judgment on the behavior of its writer [not this one], his motivations, and even his personal moral standards, when he wrote the letter, what cannot be denied is the fact that this phenomenon called LOVE can stir anyone to act in a way that is beyond the realm of normalcy, regardless of the consequences, and without any hint of rational justification. But then, that’s something that goes without saying.
It is impossible to be in love and be wise at the same time.
While those who are inclined to take the rational approach, deem love as a form of madness, an affliction from which one should strive to be free, there are also those who take the view that love, as expressed through the heart, is a means of discovering certain truths that is separate and apart from reason. Thus, to Blaise Pascal, heart has reasons of which reason knows nothing.
So, to our letter’s writer, it perhaps was not a matter of reason, but plain obedience to the dictates of his love the leading of his heart. And that could be something that is too deep and profound to grasp. While it may be taken as exemplifying a failure of reason, it can at the same time be seen as demonstrating the triumph of love. Indeed, our letter is just one part of a bigger story: of love and the law, and of their interaction with known standards of reason.
If I may... 