What Love Tells Me (1)

Last weekend, Johnny went with friends to hear Mahler’s Symphony No. 3. The piece spans a full 100 minutes, divided into six movements, each with its own title:

1. The Awakening of Pan; The Arrival of Summer

2. What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me

3. What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me

4. What Man Tells Me

5. What the Angels Tell Me

6. What Love Tells Me

Mahler’s Third seems to encompass everything. As I listened to the host’s introduction to the symphony, I suddenly felt a spiritual kinship with Mahler. I thought, if one day I were to sum up all the wisdom and aesthetic experiences I had acquired—something to leave behind for the future generations—I might very well write something with a similar structure and tone. I couldn’t help but say to my friend, “Mahler wrote nine grand symphonies. I feel no desire to create anymore, because I may never be able to surpass him in a lifetime.” My friend comforted me: “No two works of art are ever completely the same, and no two are ever completely different.”

Aside from the use of voices in the fourth and fifth movements, what especially captured Johnny’s attention was Mahler’s use of the timpani. The sixth movement, and others with similar themes (like the Paradiso of Dante’s Divine Comedy), are often abstract in expression. The artist’s technique becomes a subject of wonder.

At the end of the sixth movement—with its swelling, majestic climaxes and its gentle, fading conclusion—the final notes are struck by the timpani. Johnny’s first reaction was: the sound of a heartbeat. In my mind’s eye, I saw a soul—resilient and radiant—whose heart, after a lifetime of loving and being loved, had finally come to rest, returning to eternity.

“How you finally gleam, pure goal of the race I run!”

«Que tu brilles enfin, terme pur de ma course!»

The cottage where Mahler created his third Symphony

Johnny has been reflecting often lately on what love tells me. Mahler once said of the sixth movement:

“I could almost call the movement ‘What God tells me.’ And truly in the sense that God can only be understood as love. And so my work is a musical poem embracing all stages of development in a step-wise ascent. It begins with inanimate nature and ascends to the love of God.”

It seems that much of our understanding of the transcendent must pass through love. Johnny finds this idea deeply resonant. I've been pondering how we perceive and experience love—perhaps within this lies a key to deeper questions and their answers.

The “love” spoken of here may encompass all its forms: eros, philia, and agape, as categorized in ancient Greek philosophy. If, at the end of my life, I would write about love, why not begin now?

This will become a series—a collection of meditations on what I’ve seen and learned through observing life: my own and others’. 

To begin, I’ll speak about love and altruism. I’ve long been interested in their connection—they seem closely entwined.

If one believes that pure love is entirely altruistic, then from a rational standpoint, every action within it is governed solely by the well-being of the other—materially, emotionally, spiritually—without consideration for one’s own interests. In that case, pure love is undoubtedly a rare and difficult thing. After all, even caring for one’s own needs is no easy task—those needs can be endless. To shift one’s focus and energy toward someone else’s welfare often means neglecting or sacrificing one’s own. So in the real world, such selfless love must be exceedingly rare.

And yet—contrary to this theoretical conclusion—altruistic love does exist in abundance in the real world. Across time and space, we see countless examples of it. At times, it feels as natural and omnipresent as air or water.

So then, how is the giver of such love sustained?

When those who give selfless love find their own needs unmet, they may experience a kind of inner collapse—pain, doubt, depletion, heartbreak,  the inability to keep giving. At such critical moments, the self may undergo a kind of remaking: a mysterious force arises, in some sense meeting their unmet needs. Even more profoundly, it reshapes the person’s spiritual world, granting them renewed and greater capacity to love.

If this line of thought holds, then perhaps all love shares a common origin. The individual is not the true source of love, but its vessel. Love flows through us—not from us—because we do not, on our own, possess infinite energy to give.

I’ll continue exploring love, and its relationship to the spirit of altruism. That’s enough for today. More to come next time.