davies says ii

"I think the world of you, Maria. So let's stop this foolishness and talk to the point. Will you marry me?"
"Why should I marry you?"
"That would take a long time to answer, but I'll give you the best reason: because I think we have become very good friends, and could go on to be splendid friends, and would be very likely to be wonderful friends forever."
"Friends?"
"What's wrong with being friends?"
"When people talk about marriage, they generally use stronger words than that."
"Do they? I don't know. I've never asked anyone to marry me before."
"You mean you've never been in love?"
"Certainly I've been in love. More times than I can count. I've had two or three affairs with girls I loved. But I knew very well that they weren't friends."
"You put friendship above love?"
"Doesn't everybody? No, that's a foolish question; of course they don't. They talk about love to people with whom they are infatuated, and sometimes involved to the point of devotion. I've nothing against love. Most enjoyable. But I'm talking to you about marriage."
"Marriage. But you don't love me?"
"Of course I love you, fathead, but I'm serious about marriage, and marriage with anyone whom I do not think the most splendid friend I've ever had doesn't interest me. Love and sex are very fine but they won't last. Friendship--the kind of friendship I am talking about--is charity and loving-kindness more than it's sex and it lasts as long as life. What's more, it grows, and sex dwindles: has to. So--will you marry me and be friends? We'll have love and we'll have sex, but we won't build on those alone. You don't have to answer now. But I wish you'd think very seriously about it, because if you say no--"
"You'll go to Africa and shoot lions."
"No; I'll think you've made a terrible mistake."
"You think well of yourself, don't you?"
"Yes, and I think well of you--better of you than of anybody. These are liberated days, Maria; I don't have to crawl and whine and pretend I can't live without you. I can, and if I must, I'll do it. But I can live so much better with you, and you can live so much better with me, that it's stupid to play games about it."
--Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

davies says

"I suppose that most men, when they fall in love, hang some sort of label on the woman they want, and attribute to her all sorts of characteristics that are not really hers. Or should I say, not completely hers, because it is hard to see things in somebody else that have no shred of reality, if you are not a complete fool. Women do it, too....I suppose the disillusion that comes after marriage, about which so much is said now, is the recognition that the label was not precise, or else the lover had neglected to read the small print on the label. But surely only the very young, or the people who never know much about themselves, hang labels on those they love that have no correspondence whatever with reality? The disillusion of stupid people is surely just as foolish as their initial illusion? I don't pretend to know; only the wiseacres who write books about love, and marriage, and sex, seem to possess complete certainty. But I do think that without some measure of illusion life becomes intolerable."
--Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels

resentment

I've been reading about ressentiment, as described by Nietzsche and Scheler, in a class I'm auditing this term. It's hard to describe what they're talking about succinctly, but ressentiment (which sort of matches up with the English 'resentment') is a persistent mood that poisons a person, causing him or her to detract most everything in the world (including other people) out of a sort of weakness. They're always feeling wronged, but they're unable to do anything about it (impotent, weak, etc.), so the bitterness stews and starts to make everything they see and experience seem negative. They always want to lash out. They find reasons to detest everything and everyone.

I think both N. and S. would say that you probably know someone like this. They'd also say that ressentiment is part of the modern condition--that modern culture has been poisoned by it, and that has led to what Scheler would call an inversion of values. The noble, the saint, the Great Person, is devalued; and the superficial, the merely pleasurable, the Average Person, is lauded.

Okay, okay, so I bring this up because I can see flashes of this mood in myself from time to time. Sometimes, sometimes, I walk around campus and I just don't like anybody I see--I criticize everything and everyone in my head. And I know it's because I want something that they don't have. I mock them but it's only because I (deep down) want to be like them, because I'm unhappy with myself. I see two people who seem pretty happy in a relationship, and I want to poke holes in their happiness--oh that's going to end soon, oh they're not actually happy, whatever. Again, it's because I want what they have. I'm jealous, I can't do anything about it, so rather than try to better myself (or be happy with what I am), I lash out...

...but I have felt different in the past couple of weeks. I haven't felt so resentful. This isn't due to any conscious effort, really. I think it's due, instead, to the fact that I have actually felt content with my own life, my own "self," these past couple of weeks. I don't want to be these other people, I don't want what they have--I am valuing my life. This doesn't mean things are perfect, of course. But I think that, after essentially being torn down last semester, I am now sifting through the rubble and realizing that who I am was always there. I am recovering something. And for now I feel quite content.