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Michelle Kim
SFHP
Feraco
13 October 2013
Siddhartha Lecture: Love
“Behind joy and laughter thee may be a temperament, coarse, hard, and callous. But
behind sorrow there maybe a temperament, coarse, hard, and callous. But behind sorrow
there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask.”
“Everything lied, stank of lies; they were all illusions of sense, happiness, and beauty. All were
doomed to decay. The world tasted bitter. Life was pain” (Hesse 11).
Nasty world.
Love is a curious thing. It encourages us to open up, to express ourselves, to be vulnerable every
second. It’s our source of strength and weakness. It enables us to fully experience joy and
laughter, pain and sorrow.
At the same time, it makes us more callous, more compassionate, more experienced—a little
more different each time.
Siddhartha is suspicious of others. Tom’s failed love hardens him. War breaks parents’ hearts.
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It is the answer, it is the cause.
“Why is it better to love than to be loved? It is surer.”
“You know what sucks? Realizing that everything you believe in is complete and utter bullshit!”
We choose to love others first. Why? Because we can confirm it easily; it’s a part of us, one of
our feelings. We can give so easily, whether it is love, words, gifts, gestures.
On the other hand, we are sometimes wary of the extent others love us. “I love you.” It sounds a
little distorted, a little foolish. Love requires trust. Does she really mean that? Can I trust her?
While we may see acts of their love every day, we never know what will become of it in the
future.
We are sure that loving someone is a better risk than assuming one’s love for you. And, loving
someone is what keeps us going more of the time.
Parents often nurture their children with their love, and yet, these youths leave before they know
it. “This is the truth. We belong to them but they never belong to us.” Knowing that they’ll leave
some day, parents still choose to love us and risk that pain, loneliness, grief. They know that it is
something that they can give us, wherever and whenever. It’s something they can give us.
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…
Same for Kamala. “Then Siddhartha knew that the game was finished, that he could play it no
longer. A shudder passed through his body; he felt as if something had died” (Hesse 68).
Siddhartha never loved her back as she loved him. Knowing this, Kamala knew that he would
leave her someday. Just as Siddhartha had been as a youth, both Kamala and the older Siddhartha
realized that “[his] vessel was not full, his intellect was not satisfied, his soul was not at peace,
his heart was not still” (Hesse 5).
…
Summer starts, “I woke up one morning and knew. What I was never sure of with you.”
Tom loved Summer, but he was never sure of his relationship with Summer. He doubted that
Summer loved him the way he felt for her.
It is just a more solid, surer promise.
…
People change. Feelings change. It doesn’t mean that the love once shared wasn’t true or real. It
simply means that sometimes when people grow, they grow apart.
In the end, it’s a more convincing lifestyle.
“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not
loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be
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happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy.
Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.”
Suffering, suffering, so much suffering.
We suffer as a result of love. We are wounded more often by loving others. We can’t help it.
…
“The wound still smarted. Siddhartha thought yearningly and bitterly about his son, nursed his
love and feeling of tenderness for him, let the pain gnaw at him, underwent all the follies of love.
The flame did not extinguish itself.” (Hesse 107)
Just as Kamala loved, and suffered loving him, Siddhartha too cannot help loving his son. They
may be different expressions of love, a romantic versus a familial sense, but they are still the
same love nevertheless.
…
In Deep Space Nine, the adult Jake and Melanie talk about his accident:
Jake says, “Time passes, and people realize that the person they lost is really gone. And they
heal.”
Melanie innocently asked, “Is that what happened to you?”
Jake’s answer was, “No. I suppose not.”
…
Suffering, suffering, so much suffering.