Creatures of a Day: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom Read Free Book Online Page A

lot of people who have gone back to high school reunions and immediately fell in love, sometimes with an old boyfriend, often with someone they did not know well. Many settled into a late-life marriage, some successful, but some disastrous. I believed many of them loved via association, that is they loved youthful joyousness, their early school days, and their dreamy anticipations of an exciting life, stretching out magically and immeasurably before them. But it wasn’t falling in love with someone in particular. It was making that person a symbol of all that joyousness of their youths. What I’m trying to say is that Sergei was part of that magical time of youth, and because he was there at that time you imbued him with love—that is, you put the love into him .”
    Natasha remained silent. After a couple of minutes I asked, “What’s passing through your mind during this silence?”
    “I was thinking about your book title, Love’s Executioner .”
    “And you feel I’m being love’s executioner with you?”
    “You cannot deny that?”
    “Keep in mind that you told me you fell in love with Pavel and have had a marvelous life with him, and when you said that, I felt nothing but pleasure about you and him. So it’s not love I’m stalking. My prey is the mirage of love.”
    Silence.
    “A little louder.”
    “I hear such a soft voice, a whisper, inside.”
    “And it says? . . .”
    “It says, ‘Damn you, I’m not giving Sergei up.’”
    “It requires time, and you have to go about this at your own pace. Let me ask you a different question: I wonder if you’ve experienced any change since we started?”
    “Change? What do you mean?”
    “Yesterday you described that awful dizzying feeling of being outside of life, of not experiencing anything, of not being present. Is that symptom any different now? It seems to me you are very much here in our sessions.”
    “I can’t deny that—you are right. I cannot be more ‘here’ than right now. Holding my feet in boiling oil does powerfully concentrate my mind.”
    “You think me cruel?”
    “Cruel? Not exactly cruel, but tough, real tough.”
    I glanced at the clock. Only a few minutes remained. How to use them most effectively?
    “I wonder, Natasha, if you have questions you want to ask me?”
    “Hmm, that’s unusual. Yes, I have a question. How do you do it? How do you cope with being eighty and feeling the end approaching closer and closer?”
    As I thought about my reply, she said, “No, I’m the cruel one. Forgive me, I shouldn’t have asked that.”
    “There’s nothing cruel in your question. I like your asking it. I’m trying to formulate, to put together, an honest answer. There’s a Schopenhauer quote that compares love passion with the blinding sun. When it dims in later years, we suddenly become aware of the wondrous starry heavens that had been obscured, or hidden, by the sun. So for me the vanishing of youthful, sometimes tyrannical, passions has made me appreciate the starry skies more and all wonders of being alive, wonders that I had previously overlooked. I’m in my eighties, and I’ll tell you something unbelievable: I’ve never felt better or more at peace with myself. Yes, I know my existence is drawing to a close, but the end has been there since the beginning. What is different now is that I treasure the pleasures of sheer awareness, and I’m fortunate enough to share them with my wife, whom I’ve known almost all of my life.”
    “Thank you. Once again, I tell you how important it is when you speak personally to me. It’s funny, but just as you were speaking, a dream that I had earlier this week sprang into my mind. I had forgotten it, but it’s just come back, and it’s very clear now. I was walking on a deserted road, and somehow I knew that the last one who used this road was my dog, Baloo. Then I saw Baloo by the side of the road and went to him, leaned over, and looked right into his eyes. And I thought, You