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Actually it didn't seem to matter anymore to me that Sylvia didn't answer. I counted it as enough of a victory that the blank stare was gone and that her usual smile graced her face again.
"I am sorry to say this," I said, "but my friend who thinks that human life isn't worth anything, and Raymond too, are perfect examples of the way many people think. That's why society doesn't give a damn whether or not a nuclear holocaust threatens to end everything. I suppose, all too many people find life so empty that they simply don't care, or don't care to protect it. That's why the world is stuck in a rut. And why should those people care who find no value in being alive? To those who are already dead, the actual physical dying is a rather meaningless exercise, don't you agree? Their reaction will have to be cynical, as most people's reactions indeed have become. If humanity were really alive, it would have rid itself of nuclear weapons eons ago. It would have done whatever was necessary to get rid of them, totally. Indeed, it would never have created them in the first place. This shows how deep we have sunk into a rut. But it doesn't have to remain so. Life can be rich and precious if we allow ourselves to embrace it just a little more fully. Then, perhaps, people may be more inclined to protect their life and their civilization."
Sylvia didn't respond to this either, at least not for a long time, so it seemed. Eating the meal provided enough of an excuse not to respond, but to let it all percolate through and through in the mind.
"Something has changed you," she said finally when the last of the prawns was eaten. "I like what I see. You have blossomed!"
"That's not a good enough reason," I countered her. "I can't accept that. There needs to be a deeper-lying reason, like stepping onto the sublime level where relate to one-another as profound and sublime human beings rather than underlings to circumscribed relationships. Responding to the Principle of Universal Love is not a shallow thing, but an open door to great wonders with great challenges that can only be resolved on the sublime level. If we try to evade those challenges there will be no peace between us."
"Something has happened alright, I know that, Peter," Sylvia responded quietly. "I even recognize that something positive has happened. But what really is it that has changed? And most of all, what have those women got to do with that? Why did our relationship have to change between us in the way it has? Was it really unavoidable?"
"I am not denying that I had affairs with other woman," I replied, "even sexual affairs with sexual intimacies in some cases, because sex is an element of our humanity that has been abused and turned into a weapon against us in this Three Thousand Years War. Sex became a major element behind the social division that split the whole of humanity apart. It probably is the key element behind it. But ancient tradition is not a good enough reason to let the social division remain unchallenged. If the Principle of Universal Love is the foundation of civilization, but is regarded as treason in the social domain where sex divides the whole of humanity from one-another along sexual lines, then we must deal with that problem and face it, and resolve it. How else can we create a universal renaissance, end imperial rule and imperial control over mankind, and resolve all related forms of division in the world, from the political division to the economic division, which we must resolve and soon if our world is to survive?"
Sylvia looked at me with a questioning look as if she wanted to say something. Then she looked away and reached for the dessert menu. Minutes later she put it back to where it had been.
"What do you mean with, sexual intimacies in SOME cases?" she said thoughtfully. "How many 'cases' are you talking about?" The tone of her voice seemed artificially harsh when she asked this, but I also noticed that her smile was still there. The dreaded blank stare hadn't displaced it once again as it had earlier. This hadn't happened this time, even with the renewed focus on sex, and with all the emotions related to sex standing behind it. Oh God, what could I say without me hurting her again and thereby destroy the small steps of progress that we seemed to have made?
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