I try to be respectful of people of faith, even though I am not religious and therefore have no strong opinion about what Montaigne says here about prayers. I do believe, however, that everyone worships in their own way. My devotion to Montagne’s text is at least as high as most believers’ commitment to their sacred texts.

I also think that we also create our own objects of worship even if we reject the archetypes handed down to us. You would think that such chosen and defined deities would therefore be more comprehensible to us, but that is not the case. In fact, given that most of us end up worshipping other humans or human created objects, that devotion is often less comprehensible to anyone, most especially the worshipper.

The most challenging aspect of creating a human object of worship is that, over time, it enters the same space as a god, and therefore becomes nearly impossible to dislodge. When in the worst throughs of my romantic longings, I would find myself reciting a daily litany of reasons for not holding this person in such high esteem, and yet all would evaporate with first contact.

My theory is that such devotional love lodges in the same part of the brain that creates a religious attachment, and therefore bypasses all of the rational decision rules that apply to everyone else in the world. Once someone enters this hallowed space, it takes what amounts to an emotional trauma to dislodge the attachment and the emotional hold.

This, I fear, is taking me back to the same territory I’ve explored in various essays about Stendhal and Carl Jung’s anima. But that’s ok, an occasional acknowledgement of these issues isn’t the same as a long-term commitment to writing about the concealed and difficult longings.

Ultimately, no one is ever worthy of our worship and devotion, that much is obvious and clear. But I also think that for those who struggle with lingering, inexplicable attachments, it’s important to understand that there’s something primal about them and therefore we shouldn’t stigmatize ourselves for not “getting over it.”

There’s no supernatural rationale for the attachments we form, but I’m convinced that the attachments themselves enter a place of mysticism in our lives, and therefore deserve our humility and appreciation. Why appreciation? Because even in the most painful, hopeless moments, these connections give us a glimpse of the Divine.