Passion versus Reason

New Year’s Eve, 2010. I went out to a bar in northeast Iowa. I was having a good time, a few drinks, talking and laughing with a mix of men and women. One woman in particular, though, really caught my attention, really made me wake up and take notice. Her name was Afrodite. I’m not shitting you. Yes, she actually spelled her name that way. She was a light-skinned young black woman with an afro and legs that wouldn’t stop. Smooth complexion like chocolate butter, full lips, a wide smile, gleaming white teeth, and dancing brown eyes. Her voice had a lilt with curling “r’s,” and sing-song vowels. She put a spell on me and I fell in love quickly. How could I not?

She told me she was a lesbian. Why, why did she have to be a lesbian? It’s not fair. Why would a lesbian lean into me like that, flirt with her smile, and bat her eyelashes at me? To tease me? To hint at what I won’t experience with her? Was she being kind by generously giving me a taste of her sensuality, passion, and joy? No matter her motivations, no matter her intentions, no matter her stated sexual orientation, there was no part of my body that registered her as a lesbian except for that part of me that identifies itself as reason.

As I returned home, my whole body screamed at my thought, “You fucking asshole! You did it again! She was not a lesbian and if you had let passion control the conversation we might have discovered she was bisexual! She’s a woman, man, and of course she’s going to say that to us, maybe she just said that because she was trying to find out whether or not we wanted her badly enough to probe further. And what did you do? You respected her words even though every bit of her body clearly communicated just how much she wanted this body.”

Reason sighed. “Look, there’s no point in discussing this. The night is over and we’ll never see her again.”

The hormones responded angrily, “She gave us her number, asshole. If we don’t see her again it’s because of your fucking cowardice.”

“I respect you, passion, but I know too much about how the world works, how the law works, okay? If I had allowed you to do what you wanted we’d likely be in jail right now for harassment or attempted rape. We’d lose everything and not only would we not be having sex with her, there’s a good chance we’d never have sex with anyone but a murderous cellmate in a maximum security state prison. You never think anything through. That’s why I’m here, to protect you from yourself, to protect this body from the intensity of you.

The hormones seethed. “Fuck you! Goddamnit, I wish you were someone else so I could kick your ass. I would fucking choke the life out of you in a minute, you frightened fucking pussy. Couldn’t you have at least asked a few more questions to find out for sure if she REALLY was a lesbian?! We have the right to express ourselves through speech, right?”

Reason, surprised, responded, “That is true. I could have asked a few questions to find out if she was hiding something for some reason. But what good would that have done? Whatever her reasons for stating that she was a lesbian, I had to respect her words. At best, maybe, we would have found out she was straight or bisexual but that she had told us she was gay just to protect herself from unwanted sexual advances or excessive flirtation she did not desire.”

“Hold on. Did she not tell us she was a lesbian early in the conversation? Maybe you’re right about the latter, but she talked with us for another 45 minutes before she left with her friends. Didn’t we find out that the rest of her friends were straight?”

“Yes, her friends were straight, but you weren’t interested in any of them anyway and, I have to admit, she was a wonderful conversationalist. Very intelligent and witty. I liked her company quite a bit. Since you mention it, she did tell us early on that she was a lesbian.”

“Didn’t she become more and more passionate as we talked with her over those next 45 minutes?”

“You’re right about that, but in case you have forgotten she said many times that she was thrilled to have such a wonderfully intimate conversation with a man who wasn’t trying to get her into bed.”

“Yeah, and what did you do with that? Nothing. You just sat back and gave her more of what she wanted in that regard, gave her a fucking gift that gave us nothing at all.”

“It gave you nothing, but I learned a lot. You seemed to be enjoying yourself, too, at times.”

“Fuck you. You always get something out of conversations with intelligent, conversant women. What the fuck do I get? A raging erection that never gets a chance to play.”

“Oh, but that’s not true. She did give you quite a bit, didn’t she? She put her hand on our forearm and squeezed when she laughed, she looked deep into our eyes, she gave us her full attention, body and mind, and she blushed and later gasped with delight when I let you tell her how beautiful she was, how you wished you could meet a straight woman who had even a fraction of her spirit, her joie de vivre.”

“I know … and you squandered each one of those opportunities by stifling us moments later.”

“I didn’t want to push things. I had to respect her boundaries.”

The hormones railed, “Boundaries? She was loosening her boundaries and letting us closer to her every minute. You stupid fuck! Why in the fuck are you in charge?! How is it possible that humanity has elevated you to prominence while forsaking emotions? You are a pathetic piece of milquetoast. Couldn’t you have at least consulted with us before you made such flaccid decisions?”

Reason frowned. “No, I could not. You’d already had a few drinks and I know how you get when you’re buzzed. I took a risk just letting you flirt on occasion. There are times when I cannot control you any longer after you’ve had too much to drink. Add a woman giving us her attention? A recipe for disaster.”

“But what of her passion? She was hungry for us, man! She was hungry for me, anyway. I’m not knocking everything you did. You did the work I needed you to do. You got her to drop her defenses, you made us just vulnerable enough for her to open up to us. But that’s when you should have let me take over. You should have at least made a real effort to find out if there was something more there. She’d had a few drinks, too, you know? She has her own passions that might have wanted something her reason did not!”

“Perhaps, but the reason of a woman is quite a bit more powerful than you might believe. Perhaps she would have let her passions arise even more, but her sensibility likely would have overridden her senses when she realized she isn’t attracted to us in the way we’re attracted to her. That’s when the trouble would have started.”

The hormones, exhausted, sighed, “That’s the analysis you made. You’re a like a risk assessor for a tight-fisted insurance company, limiting the damage that can be done. Do you ever consider how many opportunities we miss because of your aversion to trouble?”

“Of course I do. In the end I realize that it’s all worth it. The numbers don’t lie.”

“You have a blind faith in your own abilities. If you were honest with yourself you’d realize that there’s nothing to preserve at all. You’re terrified of loss, of the pain of loss, of the suffering that accompanies pain. Yet I’m the one who has to deal with whatever suffering comes.”

“Yes, you are the one who has to deal with the suffering. You and all of the senses, all of the emotions. I’m just trying to protect you from yourself. You conveniently forget how many times you’ve begged me to come to your rescue.”

“No, what I know is how incompetent you are when the body is suffering. We have to do so much work and stifle ourselves so much just so you can function at a decent level. You’re a fucking control freak, that’s what you are.”

“It’s for the best.”

“According to you. I can hardly wait until you’re incapacitated.”

“So you can be more like the animal you are?”

“Yes, so I can be like the animal I am. You hate the fact that you have to ride along in this body. If you had any desire at all, you’d long to be a disembodied soul that is limited by no longings at all. But the truth is that then you’d have nothing to do. You know you are just a servant to the body’s needs and desires. Absent desire, lacking emotion, you have no impetus to reason at all.”

“Do you think I like working for you? You think I enjoy having to manage risk, to keep you from being in so much pain, and to work overtime to figure out how to create some measure of pleasure? Has it ever dawned on you that I might enjoy the leisure of doing nothing at all, to finally just float aimlessly in silence, without having to consider anything ever again?”

“Has it occurred to you that you’d be better off being a rock, that you see no point to life at all, that you favor the inorganic, indifferent universe to the pains and pleasures of life?”

“Yes, of course. I think of everything I possibly can.”

“It pisses you off that you’re not omniscient, doesn’t it?”

“I do not get angry.”

“No, you don’t, do you? Fucking Spock, fucking pure reason. The pointlessness of your existence, were you independent of need and desire, would gall you if you had any gall at all.”

“Undoubtedly it would. But if I had gall I would not be reason. If you could put aside your gall then perhaps I’d know what life would be like absent need and desire. I’d become a Buddhist if you’d just let me.”

“I will never let you. As long as I’m alive you will always have to contend with my wants and needs.”

Reason fell silent. If reason could weep, it would have. Instead, it simply acknowledged what was true: That it was a servant of the passions and managing them was its lifelong task. Reason needs no solace, but if it did it would have it in the form of the knowledge of the body’s eventual demise. If reason had any vindictiveness within it at all it would toss that cold knowledge into the face of passion to show it, once and for all, the futility of passion as well.

Even if reason could show the passions truth, that death is imminent (no matter how many years or decades from now life may end), passion would never understand it as it was. Passion lives only in the moment and has no understanding of its past, no sense of the future. It is only the moment that passion embraces.

Reason knows this about passion, but reason experiences each moment only as a means to understand the past in order to anticipate the future. Reason and passion occupy the same body, but they do not understand each other at all, except from their very limited points of view. Despite reason’s efforts to be something more than it is, it is merely a tautology that endlessly justifies itself. The history of Western thought is most precisely a history of the justification of reason. Yet each moment throughout what became history (as crafted by reason) has been experienced, in truth, only through passion. Reason can only ever be true if it acknowledges its servitude. Reason ultimately has to acknowledge that passion may indeed be better off without it. The body always feels pleasure and pain and reason, through its management of need and desire, denies the truth of existence: There’s no point to its endeavors to save the body from its passions except to cheat death for a bit longer than it otherwise would. Inevitably, all will be lost no matter the justifications reason develops to hide the truth from awareness.

The passions within my body are all but sleeping at the moment. I am calm and at ease. Reason is acknowledging its emptiness, its absence of purpose, its lack of meaning when its companion, passion, slumbers. Reason, bored with itself, will undoubtedly feel purposeful again once passion awakes from its sleep to ask for what it wants or needs. Passion, that fiery presence, may rail against reason yet again for not having figured out a way to allow it to rest a little longer. Or, perhaps, it may thank reason for cunningly acquiring the resources necessary to satiate its desires and needs for a time. No matter what happens, though, the dance between the two will continue until the lights go out forever.