The act of love-extending oneself-as I have said, requires a moving out against the inertia(惯性) of laziness(work) or the resistance(阻力) engendered(产生) by fear(courage). Let us turn now from the work of love to the courage of love. When we extend ourselves, our self enters new and unfamiliar territory, so to speak. Our self becomes a new and different self. We do things we are not accustomed(习惯的) to do. We change. The experience of change, of unaccustomed activity, of begin on unfamiliar ground, of doing things differently is frightening. It always was and always will be. People handle their fear of change in different ways, but the fear is inescapable(不可避免的) if they are in fact to change. Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of fear, the moving out against the resistance engendered by fear into the unknown and into the future. On some level spiritual growth, and therefore love, always requires courage and involves risk. It is the risking of love that we will now consider.
If you are a regular churchgoer(经常去做礼拜的人) you might notice a woman in her late forties who every Sunday exactly five minutes before the start of the service inconspicuously(难以觉察地) takes the same seat in a side pew(教堂长椅) on the aisle(过道) at the very back of the church. The moment the service is over she quietly but quickly makes for the door and is gone before any of the other parishioners(教区居民) and before the minister(牧师) can come out onto the steps to meet with his flock(群). Should you manage to accost(搭讪) her-which is unlikely-and invite her to the coffee social hour following the service, she would thank you politely, nervously looking away from you, but tell you that she has a pressing engagement(紧急约会), would then dash away. Were you to follow her toward her pressing engagement you would find that she returns directly to her home, a little apartment where the blinds(百叶窗) are always drawn(苍白的), unlocks her door, enters, immediately locks the door behind her, and is not seen again that Sunday. If you could keep watch over her you might see that she has a job as a low ranking typist in a large office, where she accepts her assignments wordlessly, types them faultlessly, and returns her finished work without comment. She eats her lunch at her desk and has no friends. She walks home, stopping always at the same impersonal(缺乏人情味的) supermarket for a few provisions(食品) before she vanishes behind her door until she appears again for the next day’s work. On Saturday afternoons she goes alone to a local movie theater that has a weekly change of shows. She has a TV set. She has no phone. She almost never receives mail. Were you somehow(以某种方式) able to communicate with her and comment that her life seemed lonely, she would tell you that she rather enjoyed her loneliness. If you asked her if she didn’t even have any pets, she would tell you that she had had a dog of whom she was very fond but that he had died eight years before and no other dog could take his place.
Who is this woman? We do not know the secrets of her heart. What we do know is that her whole life is devoted to avoiding risks and that in this endeavor(努力), rather than enlarging her self, she has narrowed and diminished it almost to the point of nonexistence. She cathects no other living things. Now, we have said that simple cathexis is not love, that love transcends cathexis. This is true, but love requires cathexis for a beginning. We can love only that which in one way or another has importance for us. But with cathexis there is always the risk of loss or rejection. If you move out to another human being, there is always the risk that that person will move away from you, leaving you more painfully alone than you were before. Love anything that lives-a person, a pet, a plant-and it will die. Trust anybody and you may be hurt; depend on anyone and that one may let you down. The price of cathexis is pain. If someone is determined no to risk again, then such a person must do without many things: having children, getting married, the ecstasy of sex, the hope of ambition, friendship-all that makes life alive, meaningful and significant. Move out or grow in any dimension and pain as well as joy will be your reward. A full life will be full of pain. But the only alternative is not to live fully or not to live at all.
The essence of life is change, a panoply(全副盔甲) of growth and decay(衰败). Elect life and growth, and you elect change and the prospect(可能性) of death. A likely determinant( 决定性因素) for the isolated, narrow life of the woman described was an experience or series of experiences with death which she found so painful that she was determined never to experience death again, even at the cost of living. In avoiding the experience of death she had to avoid growth and change. She elected a life of sameness free from the new, the unexpected, a living death, without risk or challenge. I have said that the attempt to avoid legitimate suffering lies at the root of all emotional illness. Not surprisingly, most psychotherapy patients(and probably most non-patients, since neurosis is the norm rather than the exception) have a problem, whether they are young or old, in facing the reality of death squarely(诚实地) and clearly. What is surprising is that the psychiatric literature is only beginning to examine the significance of this phenomenon. If we can live with the knowledge that death is our constant(不变的) companion, traveling on our “left shoulder,” then death can become in the words of Don Juan, our “ally(盟友),” still fearsome(可怕的) but continually a source of wise counsel.
With death’s counsel, the constant(持续不断的) awareness(意识) of the limit of our time to live and love, we can always be guided to make the best use of our time and live life to the fullest. But if we are unwilling to fully face the fearsome presence of death on our left shoulder, we deprive(剥夺) ourselves of its counsel(忠告) and cannot possibly live or love with clarity(清晰). When we shy away(回避) from death, the ever-changing(千变万化的) nature of things, we inevitably shy away from life.