In Short: Astronauts, Sycamore Trees, a Beagle, and God.

I. The Orbital Sunrise 

In 1965, Alexei Leonov drew the first orbital sunrise. He had 90 minutes to float in the inky silence of space. 90 minutes to fill with rattled breath, after narrowly escaping death when a malfunction in his suit resulted in low oxygen levels. In the wake of this terror, a sliver of sun slid out from behind the earth. Light curled round the blue of our atmosphere, like a mother’s arm draped across her sleeping son. Leonov’s heartbeat calmed to a sweet whisper in his chest. He began to draw. 

The drawing is not impressive. It is done with cheap color pencils and antigravity. That being said, one can’t help but be moved by it. Rough, simple. Layered lines of blue and black and yellow, all swirling round an orange yolk of sun. 

What is love? It is this. To be vulnerable, and in the terror of your vulnerability encounter another. To be so moved by the bright brilliant face of the Other that you must create, knowing that this creation will only be a pale imitation of the mystery you experience in those 90 minutes. This mystery is love and love is the first drawing of an orbital sunrise. 

II. The Sycamore Tree 

Now, what do I mean by encountering another? To Buber, when one encounters a tree they encounter “neither the soul of a tree nor a dryad but the tree itself” (I and Thou, 59). There is something about the word “itself” that indicates the tree's vulnerability. The tree is laid bare. It is what it is and nothing more or less. The pursuit of soul or substance is mere distraction. These may be the roots of the Other, but if one encounters merely the root of a tree they have missed all the wonder that is stretching above ground. 

Therefore, if love is an encounter then it must be one where both the I and the You exist before each other, exposed but not exploited. It is the reciprocity that flows between them as they contemplate each other. Just as Leonov beheld the sunrise, the sunrise held him. Its light fell on his face. 

John Green observes something similar to Buber in his podcast The Anthropocene Reviewed which takes things that have existed during the time span of human existence and rates them on a five star scale. Topics of his review range from Prom to Canada Geese to Diet Dr. Pepper. In one episode, he wonders what is the point of life, particularly in the wake of a warming globe and a species hurtling toward self destruction and the infinite alone-ness we each experience and fail to breach. 

Then he says this: “but for now you’re just looking up at that [Sycamore] tree, thinking about how it turned dirt and water and sunshine into wood and bark and leaves. How it turned nothing into a place where squirrels play and you realize you are in the vast, dark shade of this giant tree and that is the point. I give sycamore trees 4.5 stars”. 

Green encounters the tree. The tree encounters him and somewhere in the midst of this encounter the point of life peeks through, like the strokes of sunshine reaching through the gaps in the branches. I would argue that according to Buber, Green has not only encountered the tree, or the meaning of life, but he has encountered love through the contemplation of the tree. Perhaps even, the tree and the meaning and the love are all the same thing. 

III. The Beagle 

My dog died in August. She lived to be three months shy of 17 years old. Although she was a beagle, her nature resembled that of a cat: always doing her own thing. When I’d take her to the park, she’d shun the other dogs and join me in the shade. Not to cuddle. She didn’t like being touched. Just to lie under the same tree as me. Just to share my space. We’d sit a foot apart, as if we were on an awkward first date or in a Wes Andersen Anderson film. 

In the Unbearable Lightness of Being, Teresa stares at her dying dog and thinks “perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner, instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand free and asking for nothing but his company” (297). 

When I read this passage, I am reminded of my beagle, of the nights she walked into my bedroom while I lay crumpled on the carpet, heaving with sobs and snot and spit. She’d never lick away my tears or offer up her body to hold during the panic attack. She’d do what she always did. Lie down a foot away, rest her chin on her paws, and wait. Her presence quieted the aforementioned alone-ness that plagues us all. Her company stilled the terror of my vulnerability.  

During Diotima’s speech on love, she tells Socrates “I conclude that you thought love was being loved rather than being a lover” (The Symposium, 49). Haven’t we all made this error? Haven’t we all been so corrupted by capitalism that even the mystery of love has been diluted to an exchange of goods? So consumed by our own need, we do not love as much as we demand to be loved. We understand love to be a commodity that is given and taken, something that can be received, when in fact, love by the definition I am exploring can only ever be shared. Yes, love is the space shared by a crying nineteen year old girl and her dying beagle. Love is the thing that rests between that foot of separation, the thing that tethers us while we float in our alone. 

IV. The Divine

Note that I have yet to describe love between two human beings. In all honesty, I don’t know if it is possible. Kundera says that the reason dogs can love the way they do is because they were not expelled from the garden. Perhaps this is why the love we give each other is akin to Leonov’s drawing of the orbital sunrise. A pale imitation of the real thing. Still, it makes sense that an artistic rendering of the most beautiful thing ever to exist would be the most beautiful thing we have ever seen. Therefore, I don’t think we should be ashamed of the fact that we are only ever able to love in cheap color pencil. 

As Kierkegaard states, “there where the merely human wants to storm forth, the command will hold; there where the merely human would lose courage, the command strengthens, there where the merely human would become tired and clever, the command flares up and gives wisdom” (Works of Love, 57). 

The constant intervention of the divine commandment: Thou shall love your neighbor as yourself is the reason why the merely human manages to get by. It is why we can go on, where otherwise the silence of space and the warming of the globe and the constant assault of capitalism would break us at the knees. Perhaps the merely human can never properly love the merely human. Perhaps, when the I loves the Other, it is actually loving the divinity in the Other, maybe even, the divinity of the Other.