"And no doubt at that very moment in which (since I was determined not to see her again, barring a formal request for a reconciliation, a complete declaration of love of her part, neither of which was in the least degree likely to be forthcoming) I had already lost Gilberte, and loved her more than ever since I could feel all that she was to me better than in the previous year when, spending all my afternoons in her company, or as many as I chose, I believed that no peril threatened our friendship, - no doubt at that moment the idea that I should one day entertain identical feelings for another was odious to me, for that idea, deprived me, not only of Gilberte, but of my love and my suffering: my love, my suffering, in which through my tears I was attempting to grasp precisely what Gilberte was, and yet was obliged to recognise that they had not permit exclusively to her but would, sooner or later, be some other woman's fate. So that - or such, at least, was my way of thinking then - we are always detached from our fellow-creatures: when we love, we sense that our love does not bear a name, that it may spring up again in the future, could have sprung up already in the past, for another person rather than this one; and during the time when we are not in love, if we resign ourselves philosophically to love's inconsistencies and contradictions, it is because we do not at that moment feel the love, which we speak about so freely, and hence do not know it, knowledge in those being intermittent and not outlasting the actual presence of the sentiment."
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 657-658
So much of Remembrance of Things Past has been about the pain of unrequited love or love lost, and in a lot of ways that makes perfect sense because what is more likely to inspire intense emotions and thus stamp itself indelibly onto memory like a disastrous love affair. As all my students can attest from Concepts of the Self and Linden's the Accidental Mind, the brain plays cruel tricks on us in its monomaniacal desire to get us to lock onto one person and thus successfully raise one of those slow developing children that are all the rage (truthfully, they're overrated - they turn into things like me, so you're better off to spend the time and resources on foreign travel).
In this particular instance I think Proust is carrying on his discussion of the deeply personal and egotistical nature of love. We become one with our love and maybe even more so one with our suffering, and to move on to another woman results in us not only losing our original love but also part of ourselves. Erasmus reminds us of the line from Ecclesiastes, "Vanity of Vanities! All is vanity." There was a time when I believed in the concept of a great love, but I don't know if I believe that any more. If we open ourselves up to the world I suspect there are innumerable people who could help make us happy. One of the few things I've figured out over the years is that you should never expect someone to make you happy; whereas it's much wiser to look for someone to help make you happy. No one needs that much extra responsibility. If you're waiting for someone to make you happy you'll doubtless never be happy. However, we convince ourselves that there is only one great love, and I've reached the age where I think the Great Love is actually the Great Vanity. This is not a bitter statement because it's not some condemnation of the unworthiness of other human beings to give us what we need. Rather, I think it's a recognition of the fact that so much of our unhappiness come from our vain belief that only that one person could possibly make us happy; and in the end this is just self-absorption, or maybe laziness. How many amazing people do we channel through in our lives because we expect them to "make" us happy because we won't take responsibility for our own happiness. And how many perfectly great relationships are destroyed by an imaginary great love, a love so profound and unique that it somehow makes our humdrum lives special?
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