Love in the Time of Always

“They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion; beyond love. For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.” Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

Love in the Time of Cholera plays out against the backdrop of a cholera outbreak in what is probably Columbia between about 1880 and 1930. The plot revolves around a love story, one that takes a circuitous route after a star-crossed beginning.

As young lovers in a secret epistolary relationship, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza are forced by her father to separate. Fermina moves on, marrying a renowned doctor, Juvenal Urbino. Florentino, meanwhile, holds steadfast in his love for Fermina, even after she rejects him and weds another. While he is not carnally faithful, he is in spirit, in heart. More than a half-century later, after both have lived full lives, when Dr. Urbino dies, and Florentino and Fermina are well past their prime, Florentino makes his move again, rekindling the passion from their youth.

During the story Florentino’s mother thinks he is infected with cholera, but it is love that is an affliction that consumes him making him physically sick. When later his mother tells him the only disease he ever had was cholera, his response is “No, Mama, you confused cholera with love.”

Diseases and viruses attack not only the body, but the mind and spirit. It can be hard to hold fast to the spirit now. People are suffering at every level. The usual illnesses and losses do not take a backseat; instead they are a parallel pain to the macro pandemic. The inability to physically comfort one another is another layer of our very personal and collective despair and bewilderment. New worries—economic and otherwise—compound the struggle to find peace, to hold steadfast.

We have our lifeboats—family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, amazing strangers. Bearing witness to the profound dedication and courage around us is at once buoying and heart-wrenching making our unbreakable bond to one another manifest. Nature, throughout it all, reveals anew the beauty and continuity of life, the strength and certainty of it in this time of great fragility.

Beyond love is more love, limitless love. We are called to lead with love always. Everything that happens—whether perceived as good or bad—is a reflection of, and held by Love—the Divine, God, Buddha, Grace, Higher Power, Your Best Self—whatever you choose to name it (or not). Our souls, much like Florentino’s unwavering, fearless love, know no fear. They know that love, our essence, never really dies; it transforms but lives on always.