"The Habit of Loving"

Photo Credits: The Simply Luxurious Life

I bought a beautiful hard-cover copy of Doris Lessing's Stories. I love the weight of the book as I placed it on my lap or side-wise on the bed. I've aways wanted to write short stories, but it's a very difficult medium. Sometimes people ask me what does this story mean? And, I want to laugh, because I'm probably not the right person to ever say what something means. For me, short stories embody a feeling. They are like a dream - very short, very powerful or quiet, it really all depends, but it takes you out of your world and makes you live something vivid for that short moment. Not quite a song, but sometimes I have a feeling that I cannot describe - I would know it, it's just like A in that short story when A did that! Some short stories have made me cry. I'm always grateful for them... i suppose everyone will have that something special to make them feel human and words always have been the key for me.

I've just read "The Habit of Loving" in the collection... and I know, that I have not experienced heartbreak, at least not in its complete painful form, because I could not understand the emotional depths of the characters. I felt really sad, looking inwards, for I was still a child.

She had been living beside him, George, and he had no idea at all of her unhappiness. He went over to her, put his old arms around her, and she stood with her head on his shoulder and wept. For the first time, George thought, they were together. They sat by the fire a long time that night, drinking, smoking, and her head was on his knee and he stroked it, and thought that now, at last, she had been admitted into the world of emotion and they would learn to be really together.

Do I want to be admitted into this world of emotion?