“Under usual conditions, we tend to glide through the world without paying much attention to its intricate texture. Meeting the demands of the day often requires that we temporarily disregard our surroundings; we procure our everyday efficiency by suspending our connection to those parts of the world that do not serve our practical concerns. One of the amazing powers of love is that it offers a potent remedy to such carelessness. When we fall in love, dimensions of the world that have remained blurry or marginal suddenly click into focus for us. Neglected aspects of our environment clamor for notice. Facets of life that we normally ignore take on a heightened significance. Through an openness to those shades of our surroundings that usually remain eclipsed, we become keenly attentive to the myriad details of our lives.
While our ordinary preoccupations take place in the world, they also, in some ways, distance us from it. They distract us from the worldness of the world, as it were, because they are designed to allow us to make use of the world rather than to become fully and passionately immersed within its folds. In this sense, navigating the routine tasks and liabilities of life is not at all the same thing as being in touch with the pulse of the world. What is so wonderful about love is that it reconnects us to this pulse. It cuts through the din of our regular concerns so that we feel uncompromisingly real, aligned with the roundedness and timelessness of being. Yet we also feel firmly anchored in the here and now, embedded in the concrete materiality of the world. In a way, we are able to touch the sublime without ever leaving the world behind.”
— Mari Ruti, from “The Sliver of Eternity,” The Summons of Love (Columbia University Press, 2011)
