Unreciprocated Love

In the book, Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry, which is one of the most profound books I have read in a long time, the protagonist, Jayber Crow is in love with Mattie Chatham. His description of falling for her is fantastic, but a little long, so bear with me:

“It was nevertheless a great pleasure to me to watch Mattie and the children. She was guiding their play and playing with them, not being very insistent about anything, and they all were having a good time.

I knew well the work and worry she had pending at home, and yet in that moment she was as free with the children as if she had been a child herself – as free as a child, but with a generosity and watchfulness that were anything but childish. She was just perfectly there with them in her pleasure.

I was all of a sudden overcome with love for her. It was the strongest moment I had known, violent in its suddenness and completeness, and yet also the quietest. I had been utterly changed, and had not stirred. It was as though she had, in the length of a breath, assumed in my mind a new dimension. I no longer merely saw her as one among the objects of the world but felt in every nerve the heft and touch of her. I felt her take form within my own form. I felt her come into being within me, as in the morning of the world.

This love did not come to me like an arrow piercing my heart. Instead it was as though Port William and all the world suddenly quietly fell away from me, leaving me standing in the air, alone, with the ache of acrophobia in the soles of my feet and my heart hollowed out with longing, in need of what I did not have.

For a time – how long I don’t know – I was lost to myself, standing there still as a tree, and I have always wondered if she saw and knew. And then somehow, as uncertain of my contact with the ground as Julep Smallwood drunk, I made my way out of town into the woods, and sat down and put my head into my hands.” 

The unusual part of Jayber’s love for her is that it was never reciprocated. She entered into marriage with another man, who did not appreciate her, but Jayber continued to love her. In fact, unbeknownst to her, he takes a “secret vow of marriage” to be faithful only to her, which he keeps the entirety of his life despite her legal marriage to a terrible man.

However peculiar the relationship, one thing the book makes clear is that whether it is reciprocated or not, there is value in simply having an object of affection. There is something beautiful about admiring, and loving someone. This thought forces me to wonder if this is one reason why God created us. Isn’t their something wonderful about his love, even when we don’t return it.

This is an important point for grief too. Whether you’ve lost a spouse, or a friend, a child or a relationship, one tends to think that because your love can no longer be received or reciprocated, its existence only serves to bring about pain and heartache.

Well pain and heartache are part of it, but there is also the beauty of longing. How lovely is it to have  someone you desire. This, in itself is a gift. How sad would it be if nobody stirred your heart like Mattie stirred Jaybers. Reciprocated love is better, I admit, but we should appreciate even the longing itself, as it is a part of life that is beautiful.