The Pangs of Despiséd Love

Well, good morning! Since my little essay on Robinson Crusoe and the lessons the famous story can teach us in troubled times went over pretty well, I thought I'd speak to another topic: picking yourself up off the ground after getting your heart broken. In good times and bad, that happens—Hamlet listed "the pangs of despiséd love" as one of the things that can make you wonder whether it's better to be or not be—and if it's never happened to you, you're either extremely lucky or should get out more.

Anyway, yes, heartbreak. I've had my own experiences with it, and there's not much that's worse. You give your heart to someone and they play with it for a while, then toss it aside like a bored child. Everyone has hurt someone, I suppose—it's an eggs and omelets thing—but some people go around doing this habitually. You can't always spot them readily—the ones who are really good at it come off as sincere people, or they wouldn't be so successful. We won't attempt to discern their motivations or plumb their souls here, above my pay grade and all, but they're out there, as you probably sadly know.

But it's funny—I used to get called "cynical" all the time, but lately I'm considered at least by some people to be somewhat knowledgeable in the theory and practice of hope. And what I think the heartbroken folks need to keep in mind is that not everyone is a user or a taker or a superficial person. You can find some good and true hearts out there.

Last December, for instance, I went to a memorial service for a friend, and her husband went up and talked about her. He told how they had met when they were very young, at a Guy Fawkes' Day party in London. As the years went on, they celebrated the day every year as a special day in their lives. "We had forty-eight of those," the poor man said, smiling. He looked happy, and proud; he looked like he considered himself lucky. It broke your heart, but in a good way. There really are people in this world who will love you through the years. Don't ever think there aren't.

Many works of fiction are more wish-fulfillment than anything, and they don't have a lot of useful stuff to say about actually living in the world, but many do. I got thinking about Billy Wilder's The Apartment. Like most Wilder films, it's a pretty chilling exposé of human nature, and Fred MacMurray's portrayal of the philandering Jeff Sheldrake is as good an illustration of the banality of evil as you're likely to see outside the Third Reich. He just doesn't care—the pain he inflicts on human hearts is simply beyond his capacity to know or understand.

On the opposite end of the true-false heart continuum is C.C. "Bud" Baxter. (It just occurred to me that a bud is a new, fresh thing: I'll bet that's not a coincidence.) He's got to get by in the world, and to do so he does things that he's ashamed of, but he's very much smitten with an elevator operator named Fran Kubelik, and that love is about as pure as it gets. You can hardly blame him—in this film, Shirley MacLaine is preternaturally appealing. I wish I could explain it well: It isn't just beauty or youth, it isn't just good spirits and optimism, balanced with a certain tartness, like a well-made wine that's got the balance of fruit and acid one seeks. You have to say that whatever it is that one person sees in another, some sort of light, a good soul, an inner world that glows with beauty—whatever that thing is that inspires one person to love another, it's just ablaze in her in this film.

Miss Kubelik is the conundrum, the source of tension in the story—she's in love with Sheldrake, and carries on with him even after a suicide attempt. But of course, in the end she runs to be with Bud. The final scene is famous: They're sitting together in his apartment, and he's looking at her, utterly enraptured, as they deal out a hand of gin rummy. He tells her he loves her. She cuts the cards for the deal, sees that he's won, and hands him the deck. He asks her if she heard what he said, and tells her that he absolutely adores her. She tells him, "Shut up and deal." But she's smiling at him.

It's an enchanting scene, and although it's fiction, it reflects the reality that people do love each other through good times and bad, they sustain their love past the inevitable doubts and fears. Sometimes they have forty-eight years together, sometimes less, sometimes more. Love is like money—we need it, and we need to keep working to get it, because you do yourself no favor by giving up and becoming hopeless. Not everyone will treat you well, but there are good hearts in the world—I've seen the empirical evidence to prove it. So if you want to, take The Apartment as the romantic equivalent to the Robinson Crusoe story. There's someone out there who will value you as you deserve, and treat you well, and love you to the end. Just do your part—get out of the house now and then, and keep hoping.