Loving Life

Fire, darkness, and friendship

AI-generated image from DALL-E 2

This past week, sketch comedian Evan Breen, AKA “LA Turtle,” posted a Youtube video titled “Alcohol and my life.” He frankly discussed his struggles with addiction and how the birth of his nephew motivated him like never before to get sober. “I’ve gotten sober three or four times before and I’m older this time, obviously. There’s more on the line. And when I say that, I mean everything.” He chuckled. “Everything I want in life.”

He recounted the impact of seeing his nephew for the first time. “When I saw him, this internal feeling of just like laughing and smiling… I couldn’t… I don’t know if it makes sense. But if you felt that, like that internal smiling, that’s what I felt when I saw him. And I felt like I need to be the best me.”

Over several months of sobriety, he realized that his addictive coping strategies only exacerbated his anxiety by “keeping me feeling like shit.” Their short-term benefits are outweighed by their longer-term costs, he explained. He began to embrace what he was previously avoiding. “I can finally breathe. Being able to feel emotion, anxiety, depression, and sadness, but being okay with it. Knowing that there are things I can do and it will pass if I allow it to pass. If I allow it to pass, if I learn how to just lean into it and feel it, it will pass.” He appeared to tear up in the final frames after saying, “I don’t like life a lot, but I’m freaking starting to love it.” 

This final line reminded me of one of my favorite quotes. George Orwell in his 1949 essay “Reflections on Gandhi” wrote:

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals. No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid.

There is something profoundly counterintuitive in this. It’s easy to think that loving life means liking it. We like our loves, right? Orwell and Breen disagree. We often hate those we love. In fact, it is because we love them that we often hate them!

Only those we feel deeply about can deeply heal and hurt us. The opposite of love is not hate but apathy. A love is a long-term relational connection or attachment, not a fleeting feeling like happiness or sadness. If you have never hated someone you love, then your love for them is weak. Love is forged through fire (conflict) in darkness (ambiguity).

This insight about life and love follows the recognition that “life” is merely a name for the actual contents of life. You do not experience “life.” That is just a word. Instead, you experience actual events. You experience events that collectively form a story that you name “my life.” Your experience of these events is made through your relationships with people, things, and ideas. Living is experiencing. 

Imagine that your life is a person named Life. What does it mean to love Life? Does it mean to always feel positively toward her or happy about her? No! Connection without conflict is superficial! Only those “willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty” can be trusted. The willingness to sin is not the desire to sin, but the willingness to risk, or sacrifice, yourself for Life.

A faithful friend risks herself for you by battling enemies with you in the fiery darkness. She might accidentally kill you and you might accidentally kill her, but she would rather lose you than see you massacred by what hunts and haunts you and you feel the same for her. You cannot trust people who have never fought their comfort to be close to you. To love Life is to fight battles with her and for her.

Orwell’s point about sainthood is that it is contradictory and impossible for perfect saints to love. Perfection is untestable, conflict-free, contrast-less. Perfection knows no risk and therefore never sacrifices itself for others. Only imperfection feels anxious about the fire and the dark. Only the flawed can fight for you.

You love the connections that make your life what it is by fighting with them and for them. You find love in the fiery darkness.

I do not like life, but I am trying to love it. I am still scared of the dark.