To love is to be vulnerable.

Today, I finished reading Dostoyevsky’s White Nights. It’s a short story from his younger, less grim years, but it’s absolutely packed with powerful emotions.

This book has been finding a lot of new readers lately, which I think is fantastic. A great story is for everyone, and it’s exciting to see a new generation connecting with a classic like this, no matter how they discover it. I’ve come across some people who call themselves bibliophiles, yet they hate on Dostoyevsky and this book in particular, simply because it’s been recommended by some BookTok content creators. Why the gatekeeping or elitism over this? As a bibliophile myself, I’d be thrilled if more people started reading books due to TikTok recommendations. It means there’s still some quality content on the platform, and that people are getting smarter. Perhaps they’ll even stop consuming mindless “brain rot” and the bookworm community will thrive, even in this era.

That’s what I want to dive into today: why this simple, beautiful story hits so hard. This post is the 5th episode in my Everyday Pilgrim Journal (EPJ) series and will be a full discussion with spoilers. So, if you want to experience the story fresh, this is your cue to go read it first!

You can find the Penguin Classics edition at most bookstores or online if you’d like to grab a copy.

I recommend reading this book in one sitting to fully savor the intensity. In the heartbreaking ending, I’m left shell-shocked by the ugly slap of reality. Dostoyevsky played with my emotions, using poetic words and teasing fantasy throughout the interactions between the Dreamer (the main character) and his new hope, which is his love interest, Nastenka. The entire story in this book progresses over just four (white) nights.

In summary, it’s about a lonely man in Saint Petersburg, Russia, who calls himself the “Dreamer.” He is so lonely that he’s started talking to buildings and living only inside his head, fantasizing about anything, including his ideal interactions with an ideal woman. Then, he suddenly meets a simple girl named Nastenka. For a few days, they exchange personal stories and laughs, and the Dreamer begins to develop romantic feelings for her. However, Nastenka then opens up about her lover, a man she’s been waiting for a year, who promised to meet her again and marry her. But he seemed to not have even sent her a letter yet, and he missed the promised date. Because of this, she has lost hope, and the Dreamer takes this opportunity to confess his true feelings to her. When Nastenka reacts with affirmation and even invites the Dreamer to live in a lodge in her house, I am transported into fantasizing about the wonderful life they will have together. But suddenly, her lover passes them on the street! What the hell?! In an instant, Nastenka leaves the Dreamer alone and then sends him an apology letter the next morning, informing him of her upcoming marriage to her lover in a week.

It’s like spending hours or even days to carefully build a house of cards, only to have it all come crashing down with a simple nudge.

The last sentence of the book famously sums up his final emotion:

My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of man’s life?

That’s my same reaction. “Is that it?”

There’s no sequel book or any resolution to the Dreamer’s love life. It’s a scary yet realistic ending. Yes, he doesn’t get the girl in the end, but it’s definitely better than just playing out scenarios in his head. He finally experienced raw reality, which is undescribable, even with his ability to construct intricate poetry to describe his fantasies to Nastenka in their initial meetings. He cannot put this sorrow into another long poetry. The only thing left is a simple cry to the Almighty. He risked his love and lost the girl, but he gained a beautiful experience of truly living.

That’s the lesson. To love is to be vulnerable. To love is to risk it all.

I quote it from C. S. Lewis.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

C. S. Lewis

But what is love, really?

We use the term a lot. We talk about love, we cry ourselves to sleep listening to sad love songs. But when do we love? Where is love today? Is it even a real thing?

It feels impossible to define love because we use one word for so many different, powerful, and sometimes contradictory feelings. We ‘love’ pizza, we ‘love’ our parents, and we ‘love’ the person we can’t imagine living without.

The confusion is real. But luckily, the author we just quoted, C.S. Lewis, felt the same way. He believed that to understand love, we first have to stop thinking of it as one single thing. In his brilliant book, The Four Loves, he gives us a map by breaking down love into four main types. Seeing them laid out like this doesn’t diminish love, it makes it clearer, more real, and helps us see exactly what we’re risking when we finally choose to truly live, like Dostoevsky’s Dreamer.

He divides love into 4 main types:

1. Affection or Storge: This is the most natural and widespread of the loves. It’s the love you feel for your family, your pets, and even familiar places and things. Think of it as a comfortable kind of love.
2. Friendship or Philia: This is the love between friends. Lewis held this love in very high regard, considering it the most appreciative of the natural loves. It’s a bond forged by shared interests, values, and companionship.
3. Romantic or Eros: This is the love of being “in love.” It’s a passionate, often all-consuming, desire for another person. Lewis is careful to distinguish Eros from mere sexual desire, which he calls “Venus.” Eros is the desire for the beloved themselves, not just the pleasure they can give.
4. Unconditional or Agape: This is the highest and most divine of the four loves. Agape is the selfless, unconditional love that God has for humanity, and that humans are called to have for God and for each other. It’s a love that is not based on feeling but on the will.

Looking at this list, we can see the Dreamer’s tragedy more clearly. He was drowning in a desire for Eros, but what he briefly and beautifully experienced with Nastenka was a deep and sudden Philia! A true friendship. He risked his heart for one kind of love and was heartbroken when he realized it was another. It was a raw, real experience, and it proves Lewis’s point, let me repeat it again: to love is to be vulnerable.

So, what does this all mean? That loving is dangerous, but we lose our humanity without it. To live in the real world, we need to love. It’s a risk, but there is no alternative. We will never stop talking about love because, as I explored in my older post, You Are What You Love, love is the engine that drives our lives.

This is where the fourth love, Agape, comes in. Lewis describes it as unconditional, divine love. This is the anchor for the other three. On their own, our natural loves are prone to human corruption:

1. Storge can twist into jealousy and smothering.
2. Philia can lead to pride and exclusive social circles.
3. Eros can become an idol, promising a fulfillment it can’t deliver, leading to bitterness when the initial passion fades.

Agape, on the other hand, is a love that transcends human logic. It doesn’t emerge from attraction or the expectation of getting something in return. It is purely unconditional. This is divine love, incorruptible by our human failings. It isn’t based on our understanding of the world; it’s woven into the fabric of existence itself. This is why St. John could state so profoundly that God is love.

It’s the kind of love that drove Christ to ‘foolishly’ orchestrate the events leading to his own painful death, all in the hope of rebuilding a broken world. It seems totally irrational, but that’s what makes it the most beautiful. In the eyes of the world, Agape can seem like the most foolish kind of love. St. Paul even wrote that the premise of the cross is “foolishness to those who are perishing.”

This irrational, beautiful love is what makes love true. It is the ultimate guiding principle that doesn’t just hold our other loves together, but purifies them. While our human affections often begin with need, Agape is a love that only knows how to give. It is the courage to risk everything and expect nothing in return, because only in that surrender can we experience what is real.

So, are you ready to truly live?

The risk is real. Let’s love anyway.