Years ago, my sister gifted me this book for my wedding, yet I’ve only managed to delve into its pages now.
The journey of Kristen and Rabih, the American couple, resonates deeply with my husband and me, mirroring many of our experiences.
The book’s ability to capture the nuances of a long-term partnership so accurately, at least from my perspective, suggests it might offer insights that could resonate with a broader audience.
Each reader will likely discover a counterpart within either of these characters, finding their own struggles and triumphs mirrored in the pages. This sense of universality creates a feeling of inclusion and belonging in a larger community of readers.
The first few pages can be a surprise; we don’t usually expect a love story to be in an interpretative format. However, as the story progresses, this unconventional approach reveals itself as the book’s saving grace, sparking intrigue and opening our minds to a new way of storytelling.
The true essence of a couple’s relationship emerges once the initial allure of courtship fades. The central figures, Rabih and Kristen, embody anyone embarking on a relationship journey or navigating an existing one. Author Alain de Botton intricately weaves them into the fabric of typical everyday scenarios couples encounter, exploring the underlying motivations behind their actions and behaviors. Through their trials and triumphs, he adeptly steers us towards a more profound comprehension of our relationships, advocating for empathy towards ourselves and our partners as a pathway to genuine happiness.
“Romanticism is a philosophy of intuitive argument. In real love, there is no need to articulate or spell things out tiresomely. When two people belong together, there is simply, at long last, a wonderous reciprocal feeling that both parties see the world in precisely the same way.” – Alain de Botton from ‘The Course of Love.’
Here’s a breakdown of the concept within the passage:
Intuition Over Logic: Intuitive argument values gut feelings, instincts, and emotions more than structured, logical debate. It’s about sensing and feeling the rightness of a connection rather than proving it through words.
Unspoken Understanding: In a romantic relationship characterized by intuitive argument, partners may believe they have a unique, almost magical bond that doesn’t require verbal articulation. They “just know” what the other is thinking or feeling.
Contrast with Real Love:
The author contrasts the idealized notion of love portrayed in art with “real love,” emphasizing that in genuine relationships, there isn’t a constant need to articulate or explain feelings meticulously. This understanding doesn’t stem solely from intuition but rather from a profound, mutual connection built on clear communication and shared experiences. The implication is that true relationship understanding is cultivated through active and open communication rather than relying solely on unspoken intuition.
Rethinking Marriage Expectations
Botton suggests that in the past, people aimed to settle down once they achieved financial and social stability. However, influenced by romantic notions, emotional qualities such as finding a soulmate, feeling wholly understood, and staying faithful become more significant as marriage progresses. Yet, after his bittersweet experiences and years of navigating love, Rabih believes these ideals often lead to disappointment. He argues that readiness for marriage comes when one lets go of searching for a perfect partner. Only over time, as we allow others to let us down potentially, can we truly understand them.
“The facts of life have deformed all of our nature. No one among us has come through unscathed” – Alain de Botton from ‘The Course of Love.’
Key Takeaways
Choosing a life partner hinges on accepting the challenges we are prepared to confrontrather than assuming we can evade the complexities of emotional life.
Love stories begin not with fear of rejection but with the choice to be together willingly and unreservedly, wanting to stay together
Botten emphasizes how vital communication is for building relationships. He says that good communicators are confident because they know their worth. They can express their thoughts clearly, even if their ideas are unconventional or unpopular, without doubting themselves. They believe that with patience and creativity, they can win others’ goodwill.
The author also argues that good listeners are just as critical as good speakers in the context of a marriage. Both need the confidence to handle difficult or unexpected information calmly. A skilled listener stays calm even when faced with unsettling news, showing resilience and staying balanced. They understand that disturbances pass and trust that things will settle down again.
“It’s rare to embark on an affair out of indifference to a spouse. One generally has to care a lot about a partner to bother betraying them.” – Alain de Botton from ‘The Course of Love.’
These lines suggest that it usually takes significant emotional investment in the relationship to feel motivated to betray them. In other words, betrayal often stems from caring deeply about the partner rather than not caring at all.
Emotional Homecoming –
It will be counterintuitive to think of ourselves as mad, but it helps to accept that we are all flawed and that it’s not the individuals involved in this partnership who are to be blamed; it is, in fact, the institution of marriage that is principally Impossible.
As Rabih knows now, romantic ideas are a recipe for disaster!
Rabih is ready for marriage because he’s willing to prioritize giving love rather than receiving it.
According to the book, there are three myths surrounding love –
First Myth:
The belief that desiring to be loved is more innate than loving others is a myth. In reality, this belief can be unnatural and risky because it places control in the hands of others.
Second Myth:
The idea is that our partners can fulfill roles similar to our parents. In truth, they cannot always anticipate our needs, intuitively understand our emotions, or solve every problem.
Third Myth:
The assumption is that sex will always seamlessly integrate with love. In reality, this is not always the case.
De Botton also argues that the issue lies not with life but with art.
Aesthetic representations often impose unrealistic expectations about how our love stories should unfold, influenced by love songs, poetry, and movies. This leads us to compare our relationships to these idealized standards constantly.
Instead, he suggests consuming narratives that accurately depict real-life experiences. These stories acknowledge the difficulties and challenges of love while also offering hope. They do not promise perfect understanding but normalize the struggles, helping us maintain hope and perseverance in our own journey of love.
The idea of happiness in love –
In the ‘Course of Love,’ happiness comes in tiny incremental units and will continue to come that way. You might not call yourself a happy man or woman, but it is OK to call yourself an ordinary human being passing through a small phase of contentment.
Everyday heroism –
Towards the end, the author posits that living a mediocre life offers fewer opportunities for heroism than an epic tale, yet it holds its quiet significance. Serving the family, ensuring financial stability, supporting the marriage’s survival, and fostering children’s flourishing are profound everyday heroism. This perspective underscores the value of ordinary life, highlighting that true heroism can be found in the steady and devoted fulfillment of familial duties.
“Love is a skill, not just an enthusiasm.” – Alain de Botton.
I read ‘The Cat Person’ posted on New Yorker sometime back and it’s a story you feel compelled to read in one go. I liked it because it was contemporary, realistic and feminist. In spite of its American setting/backdrop, it had a universal appeal. The theme was loud and clear – The power imbalance between older men and younger women dating each other.
It also highlights the concept of consensual sex – how there can still be elements of emotional molestation and superiority and subjugation, falling heavy on female assertiveness.
There were layers of following sub-themes too –
Dynamics of coercion
the highly manipulative and self-delusionary phase of early courtship,
Margot is scared of being judged by her boyfriend. She is aware of the storm that would follow if she breaks up with him on the grounds of bad sex. To her horror, the guy does not take the rejection on a casual note and abuses her verbally, pestering her, flooding her phone with mean messaging! No matter how much we advance in this constantly changing landscape of technology, space and astronomy, our fundamentals of a happy survival remain flawed, which starts with the relationship with the women around us.
A young woman in the age of her so-called independence, belonging to the era past feminism and modernism, still feels savaged and besotted by the technology and her relationship with a man.
Other facts about “Cat Person” by Kristen Roupenian –
Cat Person went on to get more than 4.5m hits and become the most-read piece of online fiction the New Yorker has published and has also been prosecuted as part of a ‘man-hating liberal agenda’ by many on social media.
Roupenian’s short story collection – ‘You know You Want this’ has won Roupenian a reported $1.2m advance and is being adapted into an HBO series. The stories work in the theme of – ‘the extent to which men rejected by women hate women, and women rejected by men hate themselves.’
Following a mentor’s suggestion to read autobiographies/memoir of the heroes to capture the intricacies of their lives and learn the lessons they did the hard way, I came across ‘Room of one’s own’ – which wasn’t autobiographical but rather a literary critical essay on women fiction writers during 1920s. It falls under highly recommended reading for artists, literature history lovers, students of English literature, women writers and in general for all those simply needing an inspiration to write. Virginia Woolf, after a thorough research on women and fiction wrote this book as a ‘stream of consciousness.’
Why read it in today’s times?
As a piece of feminist writing, focusing on the problems of a woman writer belonging to a previous era, is the book worth reading?
Woolf’s use of language and intelligence has been highly influential on English literature and she is one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. For the writers learning to polish their strokes, not only reading but a study of some of Woolf’s work certainly proves valuable.
This book in particular talks about the genius of Bronte sisters, about English novelist George Eliot, how brilliant these writers were to be able to perform and produce sheer pieces of brilliance, working in extreme constraints, even hiding the fact that they were writing fiction, frightened to express their fondness towards the art, covered their writing with a blotting, for the shame of wasting their time with “scribbles” being a woman (as Jane Austen did whenever someone came into the common room), wrote in the living room with thousand practical distractions, ten children to look after, as the line was so predominantly considered a male profession.
George Eliot had to write under a male title for acceptance of her work. These harsh facts open our eyes to the atrocities that women writers and women in general faced as a fairer sex in Woolf’s era and prior. As an Asian community, the revelations surprise us because for us the West has always stood for freedom, expression and liberty and the violence and injustice done to women even if in a different era, the kind still prevalent in Indian societies, makes the read relevant enough for the artists and their male and female counterparts.
A female writers’ essential space
With the imaginary example of William Shakespeare’s sister, assuming she is equally talented as him, Woolf reasons, it’s not the difference of physical strength that had led historically, more work of writing from men than women. Her analysis of old literature and the basic gender roles discovers that men are at an advantage of space, money and education. In her quest to conquer the literary world of 16th century, this imaginary character of Shakespeare’s sister is blocked at every step by the society for being a female aspirant of writing.
So, it raises a point that for such female aspirants of writing, independence and solitude are essential for artistic creation. She needs a room of her own, money to buy herself that and a lock on the door.
The Conclusion
The conclusion of the book does satisfy the believers of feminism –
“It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only? Ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities?”
She also concludes that each human has a multifaceted personality and that each artist must draw from both male and female parts of the mind.
“In each of us two powers preside, one male, one female… The androgynous mind is resonant and porous… naturally creative, incandescent and undivided.
And most importantly she insists to write freely without any fear of judgement.
Relevance of the text to a modern female writer
Apparently what appears to be a minor attribute – having a space of one’s own, raised in the context of women writers’ quintessential need, something that a modern female writer might choose to laugh at -becomes a thought of serious consequence.
The space here has metaphorical context of literal-physical and mental arrangement a woman needs to write well. She needs to be free from the anxiety about the eligibility and trustworthiness of that ‘someone’ who is looking after her kids and household while she writes, at least till the time her children become independent. That’s when she can completely surrender to the world of her creative abilities and the magic it begets. A modern female writer too cannot choose to laugh at this one after all, as the problem is still very much relevant for her.
My personal account
When I wrote only as a hobby, I had to many times hide the fact that I am writing for the fear of being caught in doing something menial, something that is not paying one in money. I waited for the room to be empty as directly telling someone to leave for my writing in private, might be considered hysterical. I couldn’t design my own time and in stead my time of writing was decided at the mercy of others. I never openly discussed with my family how writing relieves me and is so beyond a hobby. When I started writing for Times and took to teaching as a job, many times in the alibi of working for my employers, I wrote my heart out. My excuse was now eligible for consideration.
Few years back although, during one of our evening walks, I explained to my husband and my sister, how imagining my routine days without some pleasure writing, would be difficult for me and how the regret would hover around when I am older, they took my earnest appeal in consideration and not only could I make time for doing what I loved to do but stood tall with motivation (motivation was never something I thought I would be needing so much because of the lapse in practice!).
While it might not be so simple for many other female counterparts, it still makes sense to discuss about one’s passions and desire to pursue a hobby, and if it is writing, about the ‘space’ one very much needs for her muse.
This book can give confidence to so many women wanting to express their unheard voices through their ink.
The word ‘Gothic’ originated from a music category with dark morbid lyrics. In literature, Gothic fiction refers to the one exploring the elements of fear (even horror – haunted castles/homes), death and gloom and the romantic elements of nature, individuality and high emotion.
The protagonists of such novels are usually Gothic heroes, who are hard-core romantics (Gothic and romance are intricately related)
Edgar Allen Poe’s poem ‘Annabel Lee’ or ‘The Black Cat’ and works of Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley’s Frenkenstein, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray are other examples using Gothic symbolism.
It includes mystery and suspense, (burials, ghosts, flickering candles etc. Ann Radcliffe’s 1794 novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho is a suitable example.) foreshadowing – omens and curses, settings such as gloomy castles, mountain regions, graveyards etc.
Supernatural Elements
While apparitions are characterised in a story to evoke fear or suspense, Wuthering Heights, a 430-page read, except at three or four instances, uses supernatural elements to mostly convey the psychological suffering of Heathcliff through his loss of Catherine.
(Few instances of supernatural occurrence in the story – after dozing off to sleep dreaming about Joseph, Lockwood experiences the presence of a ghost in Wuthering heights and is woken up by the rubbing of a branch of fir-tree against the window lattice. Also, when Nelly receives Heathcliff in a ‘ghastly paleness’, few days before his death or when Heathcliff recounts his ghostly encounter with Catherine’s spirit, and when after his death, people strongly believe that Heathcliff haunts the moors and Wuthering Heights.)
The Moors or the open fields
A silent but powerful link between the two households.
The emphasis on the moors in the story – wide, wild expanses but yet infertile lands – symbolise a linkage between the two households – Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, while also separating them from the rest of the village to give a feel of exclusivity, epitomizing the two homes as two major leads of the story – one as the hero and the other in a strong supportive role. The moors also represent Heathcliff and Catherine’s wild and free-spirited love.
The two houses, more than anything else, represent the temperament of their owners – one, God-fearing, peaceful and calm, similar to the description of his residence (Edgar – owner of Thrushcross Grange) and the other – owners of Wuthering Heights – one, a child of open lands and wilderness (Heathcliff) and the other, the epitome of aggression (Hindley).
Through through certain props in the setting of the story, Bronte has bridged the gap between the presence and physical absence of the leading characters to strengthen the plot.
Like the oak-paneled bed is symbolic of Catherine’s childhood, it symbolized also the isolated and secret life of Catherine when she hid from Heathcliff and wrote her journals, the corner of the bed dearest to her and provided comfort to the small girl escaping violence and searching for her expression. Towards the end of the story, Heathcliff too dies in the same bed with the window open, symbolizing that his spirit has escaped to become one with Catherine’s.
When Lockwood sees Catherine’s ghost through the same window, desperately wanting to come inside, it symbolized the fact that nobody can be spared loneliness in a place that belonged to someone, who so passionately sought its company that it seemed to be possessed by her eternally, even beyond her death.
The windows and the lattice
The windows and the lattice pervade the story as symbols of enclosure and entry of the elements of the world outside, especially the weather – sometimes alien but mostly resonating with the world within Wuthering Heights.
Weather as a prominent symbol in the story also describes the tumult within the hearts of its inhabitants – the characters have been firmly rooted in the natural images of their environment. The elementary forces of nature have been aptly used by the storyteller to introduce the readers to the changing landscapes of the characters’ emotions by way of narration and dialoguing.
Taking Nelly’s narration as an example when she described the night of Heathcliff’s departure from Wuthering Heights, we have this –
‘About midnight, while we still sat up, the storm came rustling over the Heights in full fury. There was a violent wind, as well as thunder, and either one or the other split a tree off at the corner of the building; a huge bough fell across the roof and knocked down a portion of the chimney-stack, sending a clatter of stones and soot into the kitchen fire.’
Wuthering Heights, during the time of its first release in 1847 was considered controversial on religious and moral grounds. But today it is one of the greatest classics in English literature. The symbolic devices the author uses to communicate the soulful love, wilderness and emotional turmoil of her lead characters, remain a subject of interest for many literature enthusiasts and language experts.
To me, the book, after three reads, has become a treasure to cherish and a tale to revisit, whenever the weather reminds me of Nelly narrating the intriguing story of Catherine and Heathcliff.
How to establish spiritual optimism or access the real power of spirit.
Healthiest response to life is laughter from the heart
Establishing a roadmap to happiness within.
The Characterization of Mickey Fellows –
The idea behind Mickey Fellows was to lead towards the discovery that the real laughter comes from a deep abyss of abundance and authentic joy coming from the foundational level of the soul.
Deepak Chopra’sWhy is God laughing is the first book amongst the various bestsellers I have read by the author. It comes at a time in my life when I would soon be reaching the age of the protagonist, Mickey Fellows, chosen to highlight the point of Spiritual Optimism.
Rushed and panting for ambition, craving to live up to the maximum potential of our existence we often find ourselves drowning in our work, without realizing that in the context of peace and spirituality we were all wrong to begin with.
Chopra has interconnected the concept of Spiritual optimism with intense internal communication, with INTUITION and CREATIVITY.
Through his story of a highly ambitious comedian, disconnected not only with his family but also with himself, he symbolizes the ironies of being human – even the one who has willfully chosen ‘laughing’ as a full-time profession, cannot possess ultimate happiness and peace, unless his laugh is resonant with the laugh of the Divine or has germinated from a deeper seat of joy within.
Claim –
There is a feeling of wonderment when we see from the eyes of a mystic. For us the reality ends at the physical existence of things. When we associate things with meanings more than their physical possession, we expand the life’s capability of experiencing joy and with practice we make this meaning the very foundation of our existence.
Evidence –
Chopra endorses creativity to be the soul sister of intuition. He supports his statement by considering Einstein’s example, when the great scientist confessed that the thing that separated him from the atheists was that unlike him “they cannot hear the music of the spheres.” He would rely on his inner intuitive voice that made him take creative leaps to greatest scientific discoveries, rather than trudging the linear path of established facts.
He supports the belief that both science and spirituality are based on humans’ intuitive powers. Through Einstein’s example and the spiritual discoveries of the hero of his story, Mickey Fellows, he explains elaborately how our stay at the destination of authentic and ultimate joy is intense and long lasting and can be trudged by making these powers more easily accessible.
Theme review –
The lack of this accessibility can lead to inexplicable ironies and confusions to the extent that even a comedian by profession, is unable to laugh at himself and abstract more joy from his life than the others! It was only when he is able to shed various layers of pessimism including his ego and ingratitude, that he discovers true joy that comes from a deeper place within and stays longer.
When we listen in quietude to the world around, we encounter hidden messages and extract their meanings in the context of our reality. And it is in this state of mindfulness that ensues, that we take the clues and connect better with our intuition.
Symbolism –
The laughing of God –
Chopra indirectly points at a secret understanding of an existential truth, through the laughing of God; the very tittle of the book.
We might in the first instance, think of God when we hear of His laughter from Mickey’s dead father, as a megalomaniac selfish presence in the universe overlooking the world gone berserk. But here the God is a representation of coming of age as a human when we are able to laugh at the paradoxes, ironies and mysteries of our being, when we too like God get the secret that we are who we are sans our ego and without any fear. When we realise that we can shed the rind of our self-image and our delusionary apprehensions, we can connect with our true self.
Just like when we internally laugh at the innocent mistakes of a child, we would laugh at our ego. In fact, the laughing of God takes us to the understanding of the root cause of the tumult of issues the world is facing today – lack of connectivity with the self.
(Ego here refers to the self-image camouflaging our true self by our own judgement and analysis. True self is the field of possibility and creativity and the field of power. Chopra refers to it as field because the true self, he considers, is not localized within a human. It is a part of this universe and therefore, infinite.
He preaches that through self-awareness of our thoughts, feelings and behaviours, we can walk beyond the ego.)
The mentor – Francisco
How surreal it would be to have a mystical mentor like Mickey’s in one’s life; someone emerging maybe from an empty space between the stack of books in a library, or in the window behind while one combs her hair looking into the mirror?
Francisco is the exaggerated version of the role he plays, symbolizing the mystery of mentoring we all experience in bits and pieces, contributing to form a bigger meaning in the context of our individual life. He reminds us in milder patterns, the authentic coaching of values we might have received from someone known or anonymous, in the past, the teachings of whom have stayed with us in contingencies.
One day you find it difficult to trace the end of the thread. You can’t remember when you lost touch with them, like an old professor in college, but you might not need their guidance any more. The fact that they were ever present seems delusionary.
Coming back to the major takeaway of the story –
In Chopra’s own words –
“Intuition is a form of intelligence which is not based on logic or rationality. It is purely contextual, relational, holistic, eavesdrops into what’s happening in the universe that is relevant to you. It doesn’t have to do anything with winning or losing.”
Every page of this insightful journey that Dr. Shefali Tsabary ushers us into, demands deep reflection. Her words are likely to evoke the inevitable guilt pangs especially in those of us nurturing slightly older kids.
It busts the myth of parenting as an entitlement by virtue of biology; a proclamation which emerges from the fallacy of having the child being brought into this world from our blood and sweat alone, whereas the fact, only visible to the minds open to acceptance, remains that the children we claim ours, have emerged only ‘through’ us.
