Unconditional love (You can never hold back Spring)?

Sakura at Kobe College

I have been thinking a lot about love, recently. Not deliberately, nor intentionally, and certainly not to great effect. Instead, the thoughts extrude, cropping up unsolicited in more reasoned reflection, like Spring crocuses, or dandelions perhaps. It may be the season, which is not the cruellest month this year, but a welcome relief from so much snow on the mountain, and the huddling around the kotatsu in the mornings. Or it could be the discussion I heard on last week’s Start the Week, in which Andrew Marr’s interviewee was the author of a new book on the subject of other than romantic or erotic love—on varieties of agape. Or it might have been Julian asking me last week whether I loved him more than his older brother (How have I failed as a parent so far that he harbours such insecurity?). Most probably, these are all related phenomena, the warm breezes and chatter of the end of winter. I can’t express the sentiment better than Tom Waits, you should just watch and listen (Winter dreams the same dream every time, but baby, you can never hold back Spring)…

Click to listen 

Anyway, these minor eruptions of the unconscious have produced two small insights in my own understanding of love, which is all we can talk about with any confidence. The first is the right ‘long answer’ to Julian’s question, which requires a piece to itself to unpack properly. (The short answer is No, of course.) The second insight is this:

There is no such thing as unconditional love, beyond the intoxication of adolescence. There are always strings. It’s simply that for our children we are infinitely willing to alter the conditions of our emotional contracts, on the turn of a dime, whereas for most other people we are not: in the case of other adults, we prefer to maintain the illusion of personal integrity, and clinging forever to the letter—rather than the spirit—of the original document. As if were real...

The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat
You win a while, and then it's done
Your little winning streak.

And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat
You live your life, as if it's real
A thousand kisses deep.

Leonard Cohen, A Thousand Kisses Deep (Recorded Version)

And the infinitely superior spoken section of the poem

With that sorted, I can get back to preparing my lessons.