Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1952 08:26:11 -0500 (EST)
From: cmccullers@00FD:2881:B7F0:194F:A4AB:E199
To: kizz@ohok.com
Subject: Sucker

There is one thing I have learned, but it makes me feel guilty and is hard to figure out. If a
person admires you a lot you despise him and don't care-and it is the person who doesn't
notice you that you are apt to admire. This is not easy to realize.

First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons--but the fact that it is a joint
experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are
the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is
only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long
time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a
solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which
makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love
within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world--a world
intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we
speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring--this lover can be man,
woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the
stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange
girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a
fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes,
and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else--but that does not affect the evolution
of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild,
extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus
for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of
someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined
solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants
to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved
is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons.
For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible
relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.

Carson_