Culver City, December 2008.
Love is to hold a person in the highest possible regard. It is an unstoppable force. Pride is to hold oneself in the highest possible regard. It is an immovable object. That is all good and well, until the first collides with the second.
So the question is: What happens when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
Well, in philoshopical terms, this has been addressed as part of the omnipotence paradox, similar to the question “Can God create a stone so heavy it cannot be lifted, not even by God Himself?” which we of course realize is a self-contradiction. In physical terms, science fiction author Isaac Asimov posited the answer that there would be an “endless transfer of energy.” In practical terms, there would simply be a very big explosion :).
However, I’m more interested in the question as I initially posed it: What happens when love collides with pride? As far as I’m concerned, the answer is depression.
A wise man (yes he had a white beard and round spectacles — he really did!) once explained it to me like so: Depression is like a mouse trapped in a small room. Its initial reaction is to manically scratch at the walls until it realizes its helplessness, then it curls into a ball and cowers in the corner, refusing all food and water.
For a long time I thought that was the only answer, and continue to believe so. However, the problem lies not in the answer, but in the question itself. Indeed, the answer to the question “What happens when love collides with pride?” is in fact “depression.” But if we take the question back to its origins as an unstoppable force colliding with an immovable object, then we realize that it is only hypothetical, for there are no unstoppable forces in the universe and there are no immovable objects. A scientific explanation of why that seems to be the case is beyond the scope of this blog, but the universe would simply be impossible otherwise.
Therefore, any love that is considered unstoppable in the face of pride is not love at all, but obsession. Similarly, any pride that does not yield to the force of love is not pride, but stubbornness. And no one worthy of my love would ever pit it against my pride.
I first asked myself this question in the back seat of a cab taking me from Los Angeles Airport to my apartment in Culver City, December 2008.
