What More in the Name of Love

Perhaps it is because I so often travel alone. Actually, I’m certain it is because I so often travel alone: as I wander around a city my eye turns toward couples in love, and they are everywhere. I find myself wondering how they met. What word was said or look exchanged that brought them together? I wonder what lust or need, what mutual respect, keeps them together still. I wonder where they will be five or fifty years from now. And often I wonder why on earth I’m traveling alone, watching others love while having no one beside me with whom I can love and be loved.

This photograph was taken along the Saigon River, where two things stood out to me. First was the ship’s port of registration, Haiphong, which brought to mind the bombings of the Vietnam War. Second was the couple. The woman is cleaning out the man’s ear—a most mundane yet intimate act of love if ever there was one. 

One of my favorite writer’s on love—and many other topics—is Fyodor Dostoevsky. While not directly related to ear cleaning, here’s a quote from one of his characters in The Brothers Karamazov:

A true act of love, unlike imaginary love, is hard and forbidding. Imaginary love yearns for an immediate heroic act that is achieved quickly and seen by everyone. People may even reach a point where they are willing to sacrifice their lives, as long as the ordeal doesn’t last too long, is quickly over—just like on the stage, with the public watching and admiring.