[00:10.40] Among the more curious questions that can be asked about love is this:
[00:15.36]when one feels romantic love,
[00:17.47]does he feel it in breaks,
[00:19.24]with interruptions or changes,
[00:21.53]or does he feel it continuously,
[00:23.52]without interruption or change?
[00:26.29]Poetry and song seduce one into thinking love continues without interruption.
[00:32.73]“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds,”
[00:36.69]wrote Shakespeare in one of his famous sonnets.
[00:40.14]Love is “an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken,
[00:44.85]”he continued. And Elizabeth Barret Browning wrote of her constancy to her husband Robert in such lines as this:
[00:53.00]“What I do and what I dream include thee.” Some of the greatest operas also praise the ever
[00:59.71]-lasting love by some heroes and heroines dying for it. In reality, love probably goes on with breaks and interruptions.
[01:10.24]First, it is difficult to suppose that one can experience anything continuously.
[01:16.67]Sleep interrupts wakefulness, and sleep itself is interrupted by dreams and nightmares.
[01:23.45]The feeling one has for his lover during wakefulness may be blotted out or intensified by sleep.
[01:31.77]In either case, the feeling changes. When one is awake, he cannot fix his eyes or his attention constantly on a single object.
[01:41.49]He must blink, if nothing else. More likely he will look to something else for variety or from necessity.
[01:50.28]His mind may turn to the stock market or he may become fascinated by the operation of a pile driver on his way to work.
[01:58.95]His focus for much of his day is on work. As he closes the door to his office,
[02:05.01]his thoughts may turn to his love, but sitting at his desk, his eyes fix on the print and figures there.
[02:12.73]Pain and pleasure, either one, can distract a lover from concentrating on his love.
[02:19.22]Pain calls everything to itself. One can forget one’s love for a period even over a stubbed toe.
[02:28.00]The pleasure of too much food or drink can be totally absorbing.
[02:33.43]The pleasure even of one’s lover may become boring periodically.
[02:38.62]Often the greatest distraction is oneself. At times the preoccupation with self,
[02:45.22]the worry over self, the development of self, the delight in self admit no other thought.
[02:52.97]Lovely as love might be, one can neither live nor love continuously.
[02:59.50]At best, a lover can only echo the words of the poet Ernest Dowson, and say,
[03:05.41]“I have been faithful to thee in my fashion.”
