A Story on Good-Bye
A response to the Letter Ninette wrote in the book "Inshallah" by Oriana Fallaci.
Darling, truly it hurts that a third party had to get involved in our story. Furthermore, I still do not understand the reason you fail to communicate in the language we both understand, it baffles me that I could not understand most of what you said, and while you could have spoken in the language I would understand yet you chose not to. But what can I say other than to trust in your decision-making.
I cannot help but be caught in the midst of two different states, happy and sad, happy at the fact that all I said registered in your mind and that you decided to impress them in your mind, it gladdened me that you impressed it in your memory. I am rather sad at the fact that you could not tell me that day of how jealous you felt of Mister Boltzmann.
Boltzmann's theory of life, truly played a major role in my belief, but with all of the happenings during this time, I have come to the notion that life goes beyond mathematics and formulas, and that no formula can fully decipher what life is and I have come to believe that LIFE is nothing but “Living In Faith Everyday”. Since one cannot account for what will happen in the next moment, one cannot state whether he would be alive or dead, who knows if a stray bullet might bring one down or one gets knocked down by a moving vehicle in all we cannot account for the next moment and therefore, that which we term as “ugly surprises of tomorrow” can later be termed as “sweet memories of yesterday”.
After our last encounter, I have come to the realization that life and death are joined as one, they are the two sides of a coin and therefore, instead of discussing them separately, we should rather discuss them as a whole, the problem with man is separating the whole and discussing them in bits, so to understand the two, we should rather discuss them as a whole. One is the journey of man while the other is the destination of man. I cannot tell you what is next after death, but the truth is that it will be a waste for man to live his life as if his actions do not count. Man, should live his life with the notion that his actions have a responsibility attached to them, and therefore, man should live his life to the fullest. Life on its own is unique and it stands outside of our daily activities and if Mister Boltzmann had realized that, probably he would not have committed suicide.
Everyday, we wish ourselves goodbye, and it is not a sign of finality but a prayer of hope, we wish the dead goodbye with the hope to see them again if there is truly an afterlife or re-incarnation, we tell our visitors/hosts goodbye with the hope of seeing them again at the next visit. Therefore the term goodbye goes beyond a sense of finality which you have considered it to be. Goodbye does not mean “never again” but rather “hopefully again”. Goodbye means I’m sorry to watch you leave but pray to see you soon. It signifies the love we share amongst ourselves, the type of love that tells a tale, a tale of hope and prayer for a reunion.
Love comes in various shades and types, we have the physical love, emotional love and spiritual love. The physical love is that which entails the physical activity of love, the emotional takes up space in the mind of the lovers and the spiritual transcends the realm of the physical, it cuts across ages and time. Love connects, love binds, the perfect love embodies all three, which I felt as at that time we lacked, but this past few days, made me realize that our love even though physical, embodied all three. A love that created a bond and made us realize that oblivion is nothing but an illusion and never existed. A love that spoke without the lips. And who are we to separate friendship from love, and yes even though the universe might come to self-destruct, which I believe was one of the few things Mister Boltzmann got right in his discussion of LIFE, but it still does not affect the fact that friendship and love are not siblings of the same mother. We have come to generalize this two as plurals instead of singular, and I believe this is a challenge to man generally. I believe this affected our relationship since all I could see was friendship and all you saw was love, I guess we stood at different ends of the spectrum observing the picture and therefore we saw different realities, only if we could have stood outside of it and we could have seen the full picture, no wonder they claim love is blind, the story of the six blind men and the elephants come to mind.
I guess what we search for in humanity, is friendship in a lover and love in a friend, when that is acquired, distance does not become an issue, but rather it connects. We create situations by separating our friends from our lovers, which might seem best at the moment, but at the end of the day, the ultimate friendship, is the one found in a lover and the ultimate love is the one found in a friend. It creates stronger and tighter bonds. And how I wish I could at that point realise that your gurgles of “let-us-make-love” was a way of you professing love and friendship at the same time.
Who are you? I think at this moment it is not necessary since all you could have told me about yourself, your real self was spoken without words while we made love, a passionate lover, a dear friend which are the two most important qualities needed in a lover. Therefore I am less concerned about who you were, but who we were and what we could have been. Our past does not count for much only as part of our memories. You made mention of a happy past, a desperate present and a dubious future. In all sincerity, am happy that your past was a happy one but I wouldn’t say the future is a desperate one, what is it I do not know, I only live it as it comes I hope you do too.
I cannot deny the fact that there are lots of unhappiness that exists in this present or what else can one call the anguish I experience from the howls of the stray dogs, and the crow of the crazed roosters, or rather what will I say about the nightmares of the decapitated head inside the helmet or the little girl found stuffed inside the water closet, or my crushed dream in all the present has nothing pleasurable in it but in all, I found in you a lover and a friend which as at then I didn’t know, but in retrospect, I have come to know and in all, the fact that am still alive in this murky world seems to be a kind of silver lining and all this brings about a hope for a better tomorrow.
Yes, I agree that love must be soothed, but with what? How can one show or rather prove his love to the other? In all my findings have drawn out a conclusion, that love comes with a sacrifice and to sacrifice for love is worth more than any other kind of expression of love and therefore the quantity of the love for a person, would determine the quality of the sacrifice. The greatest love story points this out, therefore, we can state that both the quality and quantity of love are the same.
In the end, I'm less concerned about the reason why you love me, I have come to realize that “the heart wants what the heart wants". In other words, no matter what we say about why we love someone or the reasons why we love such person, we find out that under severe scrutiny, such reasons are feeble and one cannot reason with the heart and in spite of rejection, spite and stubbornness, nothing stops our love for such people. Therefore, “love is from another realm. We cannot manufacture it on demand. Nor can we subdue it when it appears. Love is not our choice to make."1 Love is not a finite motion.
Therefore, we love no matter how much we have been hurt, no matter how much we have been disappointed, we cannot switch off love and we cannot help who we love. Therefore, we become slaves to love and to those who we love no matter how imperfect they are we give reasons and excuses for their imperfections
The dead and the living can be loved for different reasons and I know that despite your rejection of me and claim to as to not loving me anymore, you still love me and that was why you refused to come up to hand me the letter or rather discuss it with me and that was why you did not want to hear me say goodbye since you believe it was a term of finality, finality to our love story and you hate for us to bring it to an end, but in all death cannot bring an end to love and there is no finality to love and saying goodbye to a loved one, is not the end of that love.
I realize that death cannot produce love, we cannot start loving someone because they are dead and neither can we stop loving someone because they are dead, love keeps our loved ones alive, they partake in our emotions even when we are dead because we carry them in our heart and which is why oblivion becomes non-essential amongst lovers, how do you tell Romeo to stop loving Juliet, even in death they still loved themselves even Rose loved Jack till she died.
I truly do not know what happens after death, but I do know that we will continue to love each other even through death. I know I spoke of death in this letter but let me end with this. “ Remember death. Even for those who wield great power, life is brief. There is only one way to triumph over death, and that is by making our lives masterpieces. We must seize every opportunity to show kindness and to love fully.”2
Goodbye hope to see you soon.
Dan Brown; The Origin.
Dan Brown; The Origin.