Dostoyevsky on Hell

"What is Hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."

I once shared this quote from The Brothers Karamazov with a friend, who thought about it for a moment, and then said she thought Dostoyevsky had it half right.

"Hell seems to me more about never being loved, but I guess it's the same thing."

I held my tongue to not be petty and argumentative, but the latent Stoic inside me was screaming. The two options were, for me, completely opposite. Once I reduce my value to what others think or choose, it is hardly my happiness, but the happiness of others. If, however, I define my value by what is within my power, by what I think and choose, I embrace my true nature.

I have been made to give, not just to receive. Love me, or love me not, but I will still choose to love.

Take away the love of others, and I will suffer, I will be alone, and I will mourn the loss, but I can still choose to love without any condition.

Take away my very power to love, however, and you have destroyed everything that makes me human.

I know that God loves me, without question. The question for me is whether I will decide to love Him.

Whether or not my neighbor loves me is most certainly in question. The question for me is whether I will decide to love him.

Just before she passed away, my great-grandmother told me that love was not a feeling, but a choice. It was only years later that I understood what she meant, that love was never something that happened to me, an affection, but something I did, a conviction. It was a sacred promise, not a conditional expectation.

I would have saved myself much grief if I had understood this earlier.

It is all about the difference between someone who says "I like you for what you do for me", and someone who says "I love you just for you."

Some people will dispose of you. Allow them to do so. But never dispose of them. 

Written in 10/1992