The mischief that his remarks about Albertine and Andree had done me was extreme, but its worst effects were not immediately felt by me, as happens with those forms of poisoning which begin to act only after a certain time.
Albertine, on the night the lift-boy had failed to find her, did not appear, in spite of his assurances. There is no doubt that a person's charms are a less frequent cause of love than a remark such as: "No, this evening I shan't be free." We barely notice this remark if we are with friends; we remain gay all the evening, a certain image never enters our mind; during those hours it remains dipped in the necessary solution; when we return home we find the plate developed and perfectly clear. We become aware that life is no longer the life which we would have surrendered for a trifle the day before, because, even if we continue not to fear death, we no longer dare thing of a parting.
Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 825-826
I found myself sharing the line, "There is no doubt that a person's charms are a less frequent cause of love than a remark such as: 'No, this evening I shan't be free'" with friends because I thought it was simple but also decidedly true. Why is a little jealousy, or, in a larger sense, a little uncertainty such a trigger for love? Why will we fly across the country or the world to test out the legitimacy of our theory that some woman's casual comment actually means so much more, when there are people within walking distance who profess their love to us? First off, the obvious: as Flaurbert reminds us, whatever else happens, we shall remain stupid. Beyond that, maybe uncertainty is actually life affirming because it makes us feel something, even if it is all too often pain. The difficult part of this is that some people, and I suspect that men and women are guilty of this crime, consciously without affection or affirmation to create that sense of jealousy or of uncertainty. As a certain Economist has opined, it is all about incentive.
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