Dear Nazim

Yesterday, an aunt asked me about my friends, and the conversation inevitably turned to marriage. I told her I couldn’t imagine how anyone could live with another person without a profound love. And she suddenly smiled, like some older people do when they think they know better, and told me that love is not like how it is shown in films. I told her I never said it was. “But there’s love, of course, there’s love, but one can’t always be romantic, you know?” (Well, yes, intelligent enough to know that much.) She then said that love for your children could also be profound. I said, of course, but I thought we were talking about romantic love? She then turned somewhat bitter and asked me if I knew that there is a daily life, that bills have to be paid, that one has to brush one’s teeth, too. Now I was at a loss. I wasn’t sure how to respond. How can one argue with the need to brush teeth?

But then I understood: she wants me to be as unhappy as she is.

Happiness – even a belief in its existence – is a threat to society.

Will my life be as I want it to be? Who can say? But there’s a Nazim Hikmet poem I like very much:

It’s this way: being captured is beside the point, the point is not to surrender.