A Letter to My Daughter

On Love & Connectedness

My Daughter,

I write this because time lacks the sufficient power to contain my love for you. Although you do not yet exist, and might never exist, the mere thought of you has made me a better man.

I hope that by the time you read this, the world will be a better place.

A kinder place.

It would be irrational to think that by the time you can experience it, I have shaped the world into a place that could not harm you. But this is unlikely. And even if I had to power to protect you from everything that could hurt, I would be taking from you the opportunity to experience what it means to be human.

More likely than not, at some point, you have gone through hell. I am so sorry that the world has been unkind to you.

There is a vague memory of Mrs. Elie, a high school teacher giving her definition of a “hero”.

A hero is someone who overcomes great odds.

I don’t fancy myself a hero, but there are battles in this life I’ve fought tooth and nail to win. And while I hope to be wrong in this expectation, I don’t believe that life will get any easier. Should you find within yourself compelled to heroics, you ought to know that the person you bond with will make or break you.

I’ve found this a recurrent theme Greek myths, whether it was Medea helping Jason in his quest to find the golden fleece, Ariadne leading Theseus through the maze to slay the minotaur, Perseus and Andromeda fighting sea monsters together to save their home,

love makes or breaks heroes.

I want you to be able to believe with all your heart, that romantic love exists. I hope you find it someday, in your generation, and that it is every bit as rare and brilliant and as remarkable as the love I intend to share with your mother. I want you to feel, without me ever having said, that you deserve to be cherished, and to not settle for anything less. That you would see character and dependability as precursors to romantic chemistry.

I hope you find the kind of connectedness and companionship that is generated by feeling recognized in our defects and by being loved beyond them.

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of one another. - Rilke

If nothing else sticks with you about romance, may it be the understanding that love is guardianship over the others feelings and emotions.

I find it amusing that “chemistry” between two people is literally biochemical interactions in our brains that drive feeling.

We choose the people that make us feel the most ourselves.

And in the absence of this person, I pray you to find the courage to be alone, as it is better to be alone than with the wrong person.

Oh, but how would be distinguish between love and chemistry?

In answer to this, I turn to Octavio Paz, and his book “The Double Flame”.

Love, Paz observes is not merely “the passionate attraction toward a single person,” but in the particularity of that person, requires “the transformation of the erotic object into a free & unique subject”.

The transformation of the erotic object into a person immediately makes the person a subject who possesses free will.

Love will feel like freedom.

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can’t I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures.

When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.

-Richard Feynman, Theoretical Physicist

Though you are yet to be born, you already hold a special place in my heart, and I eagerly await the day when we can finally meet.

I love you,

and I will continue to love you,

until time and space are no longer obstacles.

-Jonathan, Dad