To Love And To Hold

How much can you love – and hold?

A diary entry that reveals much of Jose Rizal, lover (from Gregorio F Zaide, Rizal: Life, Works And Writings, Manila, National Book Store, 2003: 119):

Japan has pleased me. The beautiful scenery, the flowers, the trees, and the inhabitants – so peaceful, so courteous, and so pleasant. O-Sei-San, Sayonara, Sayonara! I have spent a lovely golden month; I do not know if I can have another one like that in all my life. Love, money, friendship, appreciation, honors – these have not been wanting.

To think that I am leaving this life for the uncertain, the unknown. There I was offered an easy way to live, beloved and esteemed ...

To you I dedicate the final chapter of these memoirs of my youth. No woman, like you, has ever loved me. No woman, like you, has ever sacrificed for me. Like the flower of the chodji that falls from the strem fresh and whole without falling leaves or without withering – with poetry still despite its fall – thus you fell. Neither have you lost your purity nor have the delicate petals of your innocence faded – Sayonara, Sayonara!

You shall never return to know that I have once more thought of you and that your image lives in my memory; and undoubtedly, I am always thinking of you. Your name lives in the sighs of my lips, your image accompanies and animates all my thoughts. When shall I return to pass another divine afternoon like that in the temple of Meguro? When shall the sweet hours I spent with you return? When shall I find them sweeter, more tranquil, more pleasing? You the color of the camellia, its freshness, its elegance ... Ah! Last descendant of a noble family, faithful to an unfortunate vengeance, you are lovely like ... everything has ended! Sayonara, Sayonara!

How much can you love – and withhold?

You and I have been reading about love in the physical sense – and spiritual sense. Rizal was a man; the letter was written in April 1888; he was 27 at that time – he was capable of love, and marriage. And here was happiness being offered on a silver platter: love, money, friendship, appreciation, honors, he says. Enough temptation for a lesser man. But he was not a lesser man. He did not take advantage of all that; he did not make love to O-Sei-San given that she was willing and able: ‘Neither have you lost your purity nor have the delicate petals of your innocence faded.’ He could love, but he could also withhold. My hero!

The very apt image is from JTravassos who captions it 'When a man loves a woman' (flickr.com/.) You can almost feel the attraction as well as the restraint, the tension and the retention, the two becoming one, emphasis on becoming.

Love offered on a silver platter and the lover withholds? Yes. I believe it. I’m no hero, but I did that myself once or twice. If you set your heart to a higher ideal, you can do it. It strikes me now that Rizal was Roman Catholic when it came to all the women he loved!