To understand human beings properly is to understand just how much of a difference the intangible makes in the lives of people. By the intangible, I mean those modes of behavior that readily admit of various interpretations and which do not, in and of themselves, amount to much. A smile, for instance, is an intangible piece of behavior. A simple smile can mean so much. But wait a minute. Am I smiling because I see the same amusing thing that you see or because you look funny or because I am on crack? There are no well-defined markers that distinguish one kind of smile from the other. Yet life without those simple affirming or (in some cases) affectionate smiles would be unbearable. Certainly, life would be so very different.
Imagine life without the beaming smile of parental pride. There is not a child on this planet whose spirit does not soar upon seeing the beaming smile of her or his parents. But oh how intangible that smile is. There are no recursive definitions of a beaming smile of parental pride. Yet, the parent-child relationship as we know it could not have the richness it has without those ill-defined smiles of parental pride.
Love, of course, is the example par excellence of an intangible good. For love, people have risked everything. For love, people have left their circle of friends; they given up their kingdom; they have gone to war. One would think that anything that could motivate human beings to such an extent would be exceedingly well-defined—formally ruling out in and every kind of ambiguity. Given its motivational force, one would think that there would be something akin to a mathematical proof that A loves B. Fear, by contrast, is much more easy to defined, though it it has numerous intantible qualities ot it.
In the name of love people make themselves manifestly vulnerable. But though ne’er an account of love has been offered that makes sense of precisely that, we all understand that this ever so intangible thing called love has precisely this kind of power.
As I have said, to understand human beings is to understand just how much of a difference the intangible makes in the lives of people.
Now, the obvious question is this: What benefit flows from the fact that so much that is so very meaningful among human beings is, at the same time, so very intangible? The answer, I think, is somewhat surprising, namely that it is the intangible that makes things so very personal. Let me explain.
Suppose, for example, that showing parental pride was a matter of merely clapping one’s hands three times. Well, numerous problems arise immediately. First of all, any healthy person can clap her or his hands three times. Second, and even more importantly perhaps, any healthy person can clap her or his hands three times regardless of how she or he is feeling. Indeed, a person can do that while not even paying attention to what her or his child is doing. After all, people sometimes applaud out of sheer politeness.
So guess what? Clapping one’s hands three times would not—indeed, could not—in the end serve as that sign of parental pride that causes a child’s spirit to soar. Fancy that!
I could make a parallel argument regarding romantic love. Clapping one’s hands or stomping one’s three times could never ever take the place of the look of romance that one holds in the eyes of one’s beloved. Indeed, there is a way in which women appreciate this more than men. Why? Because every woman distinguishes between the fact that a man is aroused by her (to the point of an erection) and the fact that a man truly loves her. Whatever else is true, romance is not just about the former.
A little while ago I alluded to “that look”. There is “that look” of pride in a parent’s eyes. There is “that look” of love in the eyes of one’s beloved. Part of what makes that look so meaningful and so profound and so moving is that we do not imagine that a person can actually have “that look” unless she or he is having the appropriate sentiments.
No doubt an actor can. But actors rehearse. They don’t just walk on stage and give the performance of a live time.
The relevance of the preceding point to us non-actors is the following: We do not know when a child is going to give the performance that makes us so proud. And we do not know when the circumstances will occasion a moment of profound tenderness between ourselves and our beloved. We do not go through repeated rehearsals in order to be able to give just “that look” when the moment requires it. And therein lies the majesty of it all.
Some can anticipate a lot, but no one can anticipate all the moments. And there is no greater sign that a person’s affections, be they parental or romantic, are not as they should be than that the individual fails to have “that look” often enough, no matter how unexpected the moment requiring it turns out to be. There is a dispositional preparedness forged by love that cannot be had otherwise. And “that look” is the product of that reality.
“That look” is of course mighty intangible. Just so, there is no replacing its power. “That look” has infinitely buoyed a child’s confidence. It has transformed a sense of emptiness into a profound and abiding sense of wholeness. It has given peace to the weary and occasioned hope in the hopeless.
The intangible derives its power from just the fact that it is a way of communicating that it is exceedingly difficult to imitate—especially upon command and regardless of how we actually feel. Thus, “that look” is quite unlike clapping our hands or stomping our feet. These things we can just about whenever anyone needs or wants us to. Not so with “that look”, however. That intangible look is genuine; and its being unmistakably genuine is its source of power.
So what, at first glance, might seem like a kind of failing, a flaw, in our human constitution—perhaps even an unbearable form of inadequacy, namely the ineliminable quality of the intangible, turns out to a be a majestic power—that which makes it possible for us to give to one another a fortitude and strength without which human grace as we know it would be impossible.