Love Hates

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate…

~ Shakespeare in Sonnet 18, 1609

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Dear Alex,

Imagine scared if Alexis de Tocqueville were to watch his two-century wise words of caution about freedom of choices materializing now in the new Netflix unscripted reality series, “Love is Blind: Japan.”

Imagine more scared if the basic tenets of Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” - two volumes (1835-1840) of field research and analysis now simplified to a few minutes in video with cartoons and one liners - scare not an average vacation-driven, thought-naked person.

Take for instance Tocqueville’s last point of five listed on your piece yesterday: Democracy undermines freedom of mind.

Let me, your average simpleminded housewife, make his words mine: Freedom of crowd weakens freedom to think.

A moderate middle-aged Asian woman as me doesn’t think of politics because it hurts our head. I am emotional and menopausal, huffing and puffing in the cosmos of my corner at home or office.

Some days I raise my wee eyes to look past my hardwood floor, mostly irritated by what I could not see from hunkering down. I get up, look up to look down again at the corners and cabinets of another average person free and willing to show me on Netflix.

Most of the week I’m interested in life stories, stories mostly about me shrouded in soap operas. Not politics or philosophy. Dramas, decisions, distractions - a spicier Netflix menu is served to the average freedom-overfed tummy as mine too bouncy and bored by now to stick with the average gourmet.

I am choosing you because I have the strength and skills to protect and love you all of my days. This cliché is poetry, a force of positive freedom that could end a lifetime of war and loneliness in one gasp from the Japanese “Love is Blind” marriage seekers, tour de force turning to a farce for most of them pending two final episodes next week.

Imagine scared is to assume love is blind, as if we cannot imagine beyond visible range, as if we cannot see with words out of the corner of our eyes or hear voices distant from our nightmares. The average home sweeper and builder need not look too far to see “threat is menacing and all around”.

War is blind, hate ever binding when we stay blind to the blinding cost of freedom.

Yours,
Kate

PS. I love The New York Times reporters for enforcing (your word) their positive freedom in photo-journaling. They help us visualize in vivid vitality the daily rhythms of the Ukrainians who live near the Russian border, bringing the proximity of war from half a globe remote closer to home. Here, a teen starlet prepared for “The Fox and the Bear” recent performance at the Mariupol Puppet Theater in Ukraine, just 30 km shy from Russian missiles ready to launch at full speed.