Those Who Don't Love You, A Summary

THOSE WHO DON’T LOVE YOU, A SUMMARY


One blazing afternoon, hiding from the sun behind drawn curtains, Claude creates, solely for his own perusal, a summary regarding those who do not love him.

Those who don’t love you are all above average good-looking.  There is a certain resemblance, akin to that found in members of small profitable religions.  It appears likely that God has chosen to reward these people for their good judgment.  (About this, they agree with you.)  Their collars are fluorescent white to match their teeth and the confident whites of their eyes are as smooth and unruffled as the sheets pulled tight across the king-size bed of a luxury hotel.

Those who don’t love you appear sculptural in profile.  They live their lives in the future.  Their futures are secure.  They itch only for acceptable reasons and only in sanctioned areas.  Their desires are all the official and sanctioned desires  which stimulate the economy in predictable ways and provide jobs for those less fortunate.  They practice virtue.  Virtue means only wanting exactly what you are supposed to want.

From the serene way they pass their days, like a sharp knife through a fish, you’d swear that instructions were passed to them each morning at breakfast, typed on one side of a sheet 8 ½ by 11.

How is it possible that they live so cleanly, those who do not love you?  It is because they know what is right and what is responsible.  Right and responsible never fail include them.  Oh, why can’t you be responsible!  Of course for you to be responsible would mean being someone else entirely.  Oh, why can’t you be someone else entirely!

Those who don’t love you naturally find themselves in positions of authority.  In fact, no one possesses such innate and unquestioned authority as those who don’t love you.  They are so compelling.  It as if they have understood something that you yourself long suspected.

It is just like when you listen to a beautiful spiritual talk and say, “On some level I always knew that”.  So, too, comes the news of your own inadequacy, your unacceptability, your worthlessness.  Their disdain and disapproval slip on so naturally, and fit so perfectly, like a shoe specially made.  How could it not be right?  How could it not be yours?