“I asked, ‘You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell-the destinations-are the same thing anyway?’
‘Same-same,’ he said. ‘Same in end, so better to be happy on journey.’
I said, ‘So if heaven is love, then hell is…’
‘Love, too,’ he said. I sat with that one for awhile, trying to make the math work. Ketut laughed again, slapped my knee affectionately with his hand.
‘Always so difficult for young person to understand this!’”
-Elizabeth Gilbert
I was reading this passage today, thinking I understood it in my own way. The concept might seem deceptive and counter-intuitive, like Elizabeth believes it to be in the book, but somehow it struck something in me.
I interpret it in two ways actually. First, that while love is associated with positive conceptual symbol such as heaven, it also carries its counterpart: hell. The object of love generally becomes infinitely more fragile. It’s reminiscent of that E.E. Cummings poem, “i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)."Perhaps the argument is that it’s hell to care so deeply for a person because it elicits an inconvenient ferocity.
