Why do we even bother? Why do we make ourselves so open to such easy damage? Is it all loneliness? Is it all fear? Or is it just to experience those narcotic moments of belonging with someone else?
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the vulnerability and emotional risks involved in seeking connection with others.
In this quote, David Levithan explores the emotional complexities of human relationships, questioning why we open ourselves up to potential hurt in our quest for connection. He suggests that loneliness and fear may drive our desire for belonging, yet also acknowledges the profound joy we can feel from sharing meaningful moments with others, despite the risks involved.
In practice
In a discussion on the importance of building relationships, this quote highlights the paradox of vulnerability.
this is why we call people exes, I guess - because the paths that cross in the middle end up separating at the end. it's too easy to see an X as a cross-out. it's not, because there's no way to cross out something like that. the X is a diagram of two paths.
This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it’s just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be.
The tenderness between two people can turn the air tender, the room tender, time itself tender. As I step out of bed and slip on an oversize shirt, everything around me feels like it's the temperature of happiness.
I am made for running. Because when you run, you could be anyone. You hone yourself into a body, nothing more or less than a body. You respond as a body, to the body. If you are racing to win, you have no thoughts but the body's thoughts, no goals but the body's goals. You obliterate yourself in the name of speed. You negate yourself in order to make it past the finish line.
It doesn't have to be on Valentine's Day. It doesn't have to be by the time you turn eighteen or thirty-three or fifty-nine. It doesn't have to conform to whatever is usual. It doesn't have to be kismet at once, or rhapsody by the third date. It just has to be. In time. In place. In spirit. It just has to be.
Even though I'm seventeen, I guess I still thought this would always be true - that there would always be that lost-and-found, and not the lost-and-still-lost that I am now trapped inside.
Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life. Silence is a place of great power and healing.
May was young and beautiful, we were legally married, but she was caught in the prison of my skin.
We looked at each other for the last time; nothing is as eloquent as nothing.
In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.
Jealousy has the amazing power to illuminate a single person in an intense beam of light, keeping the multitude of others in total darkness.
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