Recently, I went to my local health club for a swim and a sauna, both of which I particularly enjoy and regularly do; as a grandfather with four granddaughters, I like to keep active so that I can keep up with them when I meet them. But this visit was slightly unusual.
As I approached the mixed sauna and went through the door, I found one solitary young woman, probably in her mid-20s, inside, wearing a minimalist bikini; she was standing upright and reading a book. This was curious: standing in a sauna? One normally sits or lies down; and then reading a book? In a sauna? Most unusual, in my experience. So I just had to start a conversation.
I said, “I’m impressed.”
And she replied, without looking up, “By what?”
I responded: “At last, we have an intellectual in the sauna. It’s usually full of idiots like me who have trouble reading, especially in saunas.”
She quietly laughed but didn’t look up. I wondered whether she actually was an intellectual and what she was reading.
So I said, “What’s so interesting?”
She said: “Alain de Botton’s ‘Essays in Love.’ Do you know them?”
I said: “No, but I was obviously right about you: He is a famous philosopher and his articles often crop up in Sunday newspapers in the UK. So you are an intellectual.”
Again, without looking up, she softly laughed, then said, “They’re really interesting.”
I responded: “I expect they are. The thing is—there must be at least 100,000 books on the topic of love, which proves at least one thing.”
She asked, “What’s that?”
I said, “Nobody really knows what it is, for if they did, we’d have one definitive book!”
She said: “Well, this one’s really good. Really interesting. You know, love’s not the sort of romantic stuff that people imagine it is. This book really sets you straight.”
Oh, dear, I thought. Another humanist philosopher undermining transcendence: They start denying God, and then, not long after that, they debunk every other great ideal, too: “You thought love was something romantic? Sucker—now I’ll tell you what it’s really like.” For me, this is the equivalent of grown-ups desperately wanting to tell their children that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
I realized immediately that this young woman was going to have her ideals destroyed by reading this pernicious, secular book. (And no, I haven’t read it, but she had said enough). So I had to do something about it; this was an emergency. She had everything, or was about to get everything, completely wrong.
So, I said, “I totally agree with you,” and as I said it, I could see her body language relax, relieved that here was a kindred spirit, although still, she hadn’t taken her eyes off the page.
“Yes,” I said, “romantic love, that Hollywood kind, that sort you see on films, really is the pits. That’s not like life at all.”
“No,” she said and continued reading and continued standing. Surreal. I waited a few moments; I was getting comfortable now, and the sauna was baking.
Then I said, “But, of course, there is a point from which you can go from false love and all the Hollywood images to the other side.”
“The other side?” she queried, seeming to hesitate, and I thought for a moment that she might look up and see me.
I said: “Yes. The other side, where you persevere, you dedicate yourself to another, you focus, and you get creative, flexible, and open; and forgiveness becomes an automatic state of mind; and you’re on a journey, a big journey—together. That side. That’s when it gets romantic all over again.”
At last, she stopped. Suddenly, she turned and looked at me.
“That’s deep,” she said.
I said: “I know. Love’s deep.”
