If... You Ask Me, I'll Answer You

Q — I have loved him for more than a year, ever since I was taking private lessons at his hands. My love kept growing and gathering strength with the passing days, until it lodged in my bones and my blood and took possession of all my senses. Yet I am in confusion and doubt as to whether this love is growing in him too — whether he returns it.

I have asked him repeatedly to reveal to me his innermost heart, and he refused. Nor can I see him except when I myself contrive it. I have also given him to understand that material things do not matter to me, lest they stand as a stumbling block in the way of our happiness, for he is a man of modest means.

And still I say again that I love him from my depths — to the point of worship.

How, then, can I learn my fate in this love? So I have begged your help, to rid myself of this killing doubt and bitter torment. Save me.

M. K.

A — Had you looked closely at what you wrote, the answer would have come from you, and to you. If this man — for whose love your naivety swept you headlong — if he returned this feeling, he would have confided it to you and hidden nothing, and he would have pursued it without your prompting. You ought to have realized that before you became entangled in this failed love. So give up going down this mistaken path; in loving him you are truly astray.

Brace your will, then; put an end to this drifting, and by force of will recover your standing until you win one who returns you true love and lavishes noble feeling upon you. Do not squander your time on one who will not bless this feeling by answering it with a request for your hand.

Q — Pardon me, Madam, if I am frank; I ask you by way of knowing the thing: woman undertook the blessed movement to gain her political rights, and gain them she did. Were these rights an end in themselves, or a means to an end?!

Observer

A — Her sole aim was not the gaining of her political rights. That was rather the door through which she passes to share in raising up the homeland and setting it in the ranks of the advanced peoples, with its two halves equal. She has taken a notable step. It is enough for me that with it she is bracing herself for broader and more general steps: to stand fast in the field of education, of which we are in the direst need; to wage a strong moral war, so that the destructive flabbiness and the recklessness toward the values of life may shrink away from our youth; then to set right the family, which has begun to break apart, portending ruin; to strive to find a solution to the question of marriage and its problems; and to waken a generation that will feel responsibility and duty.

It is a step whose vanguard is sincerity and sober awareness, and it joins hands, link by link, in several fields — the field of health among them, and of culture, and the like.

Q — ...She is my wife. I am jealous over her, and my love for her is a sweeping flood. The more closely I study her conduct toward me, the higher my esteem for her and my trust in her rise in my eyes. But what am I to do with this feverish feeling of jealousy?! No sooner do I see her standing on a balcony than my soul is on the verge of choking; or walking in the street, than my heartbeats race after her. I will not hide from you that I forbade her to go out all last month, and by that I had some rest. Yet I notice a withering in her face, and the trace of tears in her eyes, though she gives hints of it only with a smile of love and a sober silence.

Is there anyone who would rebuke me for this conduct of mine toward her?!

Perplexed

A — Your confession of the selfishness embodied in your soul was an opening through which conscience might at last awaken in you. And the submission your wife has shown to your reckless impulse of jealousy is an exemplary sacrifice, one that lays upon your conscience the sting of censure and reproach.

You granted her your trust, and yet your imaginings were a hateful pasture, which she bore with patience and quiet — until this conduct of yours was condemned by the conscience, once it grew aware. Desist, then... Your wife, as you have described her, possesses a dignity that rises high and a limpid love that soars, so that it has become incumbent upon you to take your affairs firmly in hand with resolve, that you may both enjoy goodness and happiness.

Q — Here I am preparing for the secondary certificate examination, and I sink into a wave of gloom whenever I think of what usually comes over me — confusion, and words trembling between my lips when I face the examiner, despite my confidence that I know the hardest questions. Is there any advice you might offer? My thanks to you.

Student

A — No doubt what brings you to the edge of confusion is bound up with a psychological complex that has carried you some way into fear and dread.

In my view you should strengthen this weakness with decisive willpower, and train yourself for it by putting questions and answers, from yourself to yourself, aloud; thus you will step toward freedom from confusion, sure of yourself.

Now that the examinations are near, and until you brace your will firmly, take Oblivon; it will help you to steady your nerves and drive fear away.