On Love’s Hidden Life: Do We Believe In Love?

prefatory: These articles per chapter are not going to be full summaries, but instead a commentary of issues that were most intriguing to me as I read. I’d encourage you to read along if you want, and use these as a conversation partner (or hey, use me as a conversation partner — I love that!). So if there’s an SK scholar that happens upon these, feel free to correct me, but know I’m not looking so much for accuracy as I am exploration.

Works Of Love begins its discourses with a chapter entitled “On Love’s Hidden Life.” While SK is critiqued for his verbose style, he will provide guideposts for the reader. Through his use of italics and strong closing statements, we’re able to “Cliff Notes” our way to the thesis.

Here, he’s more overt:

The first point developed in this discourse was that we must believe in love — otherwise we simply will not notice that it exists; but now the discourse returns to the first point and says, repeating: Believe in love! (Pg 16)1

However, this belief, SK argues, has a hidden source. Using a beautiful image of a hidden spring at the bottom of a lake that feeds and supports it, there will always be a wellspring of love that is hidden away. He’ll continue to expound on this hiddenness later, but for now, we’re asked to be comfortable with the idea that what we must believe in will not always be revealed.

The note I left myself at the bottom of the page of this chapter was “Do we believe in love… do I?”