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Carrie asked:
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I am attempting to use the story of Abelard and Heloise to answer the question, "To what extent
should one seek to eliminate vulnerability from one's life?" The problem is, I can't decide what the
worth of vulnerability is to me.
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It is excellent to use a love story, especially a tragic one, to answer the question. I have mentioned
the writer Rollo May in these pages before, but he is the only person I know who writes about such
things as love and vulnerability, and if you can find his book Love and Will,this will help you see the
value of vulnerability.
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May connects love to anxiety and fear of death. When we love we "give up the centre of ourselves".
We are open to an intimacy so extreme that we are vulnerable to hurt, to the fear of separation from
the loved one, the loved one's death and as May says "the paralysing fear of one's own tenderness".
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"The tragic is a deepening and ennobling aspect of our experience" — what reason do we have not to
love just because it will end badly if we can experience the height of tenderness and intimacy? A
tragic love which involves separation describes a "perpetual yearning of each other, a thirst for
completion which is doomed to be temporary". May thinks that unrequited love creates less anxiety
than love which is returned, because you can go about your daily business. When you are in love and
it is returned your life changes completely and however fraught with intensity love is, you cannot
avoid the anxiety of loss. Personally I think this goes over the top a bit, but it is a highly suitable
description of literary love and tragedy.
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May also talks of vulnerability of sexual love. "Man is the only creature who makes love face to face,
who copulates looking at his partner". "This opens the whole front of the person . . . all the parts
which are most tender and most vulnerable — to the kindness or the cruelty of the partner." Whilst
this aspect of vulnerability may not have much relevance to Abelard and Heloise, it might illuminate
how valuable vulnerability can be.
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The bad aspect of vulnerability is its connection with sensitivity. Over sensitive reaction to one's own
setbacks and to the suffering of humans and animals is something one might strive to avoid.
Nietzsche went mad when he saw a horse being flogged in the street.
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Rachel Browne
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