A series of mutually interlocking platitudes:

• Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
• When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers. (Oscar Wilde)
• If you want to hear the gods laugh, tell them your plans.

In Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue #6 (which contains much of the same footage as A Short Film about Love), Magda asks Tomek what he thinks love is:

MAGDA: What do you want? Do you want to kiss me?

TOMEK: No.

MAGDA: Do you want to make love to me?

TOMEK: No.

MAGDA: What do you want?

TOMEK: Nothing.

MAGDA: Nothing?

TOMEK: Nothing.

How strange love and desire are; how often we say one and mean the other. It’s so easy, growing older, to see other people through the filter of our experiences, to long to re-create moments of happiness or safety. So we make eidola of them, treat them as means to our ends. But love desires nothing. At its very base it makes you happy simply because this person exists. You see beauty and have the sense to be silent. You don’t gild the lily with questions of possession; you don’t try to capture moments, preserve feelings. It’s not that desire has no place, but rather that it finds its proper place, as in a child who is drawn to touch a flower. Even the difficult, animal passions find their place, and you make love not because you’re horny or lonely, but because of who you are, because you really are one flesh.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t know these things. I want love for all the wrong reasons, and I fear going under that knife again.