Love at first sight — do you believe in it?... It is a sudden notion you have often heard of: "...She met him in such-and-such a place... and loved him at first sight."
A girl may be attracted by a young man's personality from the very first meeting; his company may please her, and his conversation, his wit and his charm. But love does not grow with such abrupt speed and fanciful ease: it is a long, arduous road, complicated and slow — or rather, a lesson hard to master.
You may not believe this if you are swept along by the current of a new love, or if you are soaring on the wing of the ether with memories of a dreamy past. But if you are striving to attain a real, reasonable love, one you build with awareness and reflection upon firm foundations and solid principles, as the overwhelming majority understand it, then you are bound to arrive at knowledge of the truth.
Every love that rests upon emotion is shaky, fickle, unstable. An animal may know emotion and feel it, and may even practice sacrifice; but man alone can measure the extent of that relation of soul, that spiritual bond and harmony of
mind, which we call love. And man alone is able to pay the price of love, for it is a sublime thing that cannot be priced; yet it requires patience and deliberation — and when was forbearance ever a pleasant trial?
Strength of will is a factor that cannot be dispensed with in the state of love, which is also a labor hard to practice. And does love live except by tolerance, understanding, and good cheer? It needs a pure, ever-renewed atmosphere, free of impurities — and these are the qualities of the ideal human being, the "Superman."
Can you obtain these aforesaid qualities from one passing first glance, with which you take in a handsome face or a tall figure??...
Of course not. Love must live in an atmosphere far removed from fantasy and poetry and moonbeams and the stillness of the night. It must live, above all, in the hours of deprivation and loneliness, in the days of separation and quarrel, in pains and hardship, in shocks and sorrows, until death commands the final parting; and memories may settle in the folds of the soul, surging and stirring even after death — and then love is the victor, the conqueror!...
Yes! Even if we passed through all these stages, and cleared the obstacles, storming the gates of difficulties, our love would still not be perfect, for we are imperfect creatures in a world that knows no perfection. We grumble and complain at seventy just as we did at seventeen. And we may stretch out our wrinkled, thin hand as we lie on the bed of death — stretch it out to the companion of a lifetime, and smile!...
And that is love!
