Alone Is Alone, Not Alive

C.S. Lewis, Stephen Sondheim, and the risk of love

There are two ways to break a heart. The first is to love. The second, as both C.S. Lewis and Stephen Sondheim teach us, is to refuse to.

In The Four Loves, Lewis articulates this paradox with devastating clarity:

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.…