Love Letters
So lately I have been thinking a lot about the power of love. Sounds cheesy? Well that's mostly because I'm starting to think that it is cheesy. I'm starting to get a little jaded. Maybe even a little bitter. And I'd really like not to be. I'm worried that the end of this last BIG relationship, has taken a little more away from me than I would like. I'm hoping it's just transitioning from being part of a couple to being comfortable in being just with myself. I'm hoping I become a hopeless romantic again, and that I really haven't lost my ability to believe in a complete and consuming love, like I might regain my previous solid belief that souls really do connect in this life, in past lives, in other plains of being.
I went and watched the Time Travelers Wife with friends last night, and I cried through nearly the entire movie. Some of my crying was because it was sad. The actual story itself breaks your heart open. But I also got upset with myself, because I found myself criticizing the story for it's improbability. And oddly, I'm not talking about the part where the husband travels through time; I'm talking about the way they were able to love. Maybe it's just because movies sensationalize love and turn it into something so impossible. Another friend of mine reminded me today that real people love in different ways, but that we do love, even if it's not like the movies.
One of the girls I had gone to watch the movie with and I were talking, and I made a a comment about how real life isn't like the movies. You'd think this would be obvious, but I seem to forget that a lot. I mean, how much of our time is spent watching TV shows or movies? I've woken up before and actually thought I had to go meet Summer from the OC (laugh all you want, I watched the entire first Season in a marathon with my brother the Christmas I was home sick from college). It's easy for made-up-commercials-every-15-minutes life to become something bigger than it should be. After all, it invades so much of our "real time."
But there are so few love stories that are real, and those ones get fictionalized and over-acted and over-produced, until you loose the reality of it. And my friend made a reference to the great love stories from History. I countered that I really think that our society has kind of imploded on itself and that the recent onslaught of over-communication and Internet/cell/phone/text/email communication makes our interactions so easy, so quick, so meaningless. Yeah, Napoleon wrote great love letters, but his letters took weeks to reach the object of his desire. His communication had to be important. If he could send a text, I doubt it would have been nearly as eloquent.
It's like Santa Clause or something, and at some age maybe you just start thinking it's silly to believe and you forget that it's not really believing in Santa Claus that makes the Holidays magical. Maybe it's the spirit of it. And we, as we age, stop remembering what the spirit of love feels like. I remember when I was in 1st grade and a classmate told me that there was no real Santa Claus, that his mom told him she put the presents under the tree, and furious I cried in class and called him a liar. I went home, confused, and asked my dad if it was true. Was Santa Claus really just a mean joke adults played on us innocent children? My dad looked me in the eye and told me that when I stopped believing in Santa Claus, then Santa stopped bringing me presents. Horrified, I pledged my undying loyalty to Mr. Cringle.
But, he also asked me, more importantly, did I still *want* to believe? Basically, what he was asking me was... does it matter? Does it matter if Santa is real or not? No. What matters is that you believe in him, and that Santa Claus isn't just about presents and candy canes at the mall. Santa Claus is really the ability, the gift if you will, of being able to feel the spirit of giving and love and fires and carrots left out for reindeer inside of you. Did I want to loose that feeling? No. And so I still believe in Santa Claus. So why can't I believe in love?
Love, unlike Santa Claus, is all around me. I see it every day. So I'm confused as to why I am so stuck on ignoring the possibility that I might, someday, fall in love again. Maybe it's the "in-love" part I have a problem with. Like, somewhere in adulthood the "in-love" part isn't as important anymore. But I think, as I get a little teary while writing this, that somewhere inside me I still believe I will meet someone again someday who knocks me off my feet, who quickens my heart a little bit. That I just might, fall in the impossible and improbable "in-love" place again. Until then, my heart is pretty full of a different, and maybe even better kind of love. A love for the people in my life that guide me and stand next to me, in front of me, and behind me. And in there is even a new love I'm getting better at acknowledging, a real love for myself.
Lots of impossible love,
Rio
I went and watched the Time Travelers Wife with friends last night, and I cried through nearly the entire movie. Some of my crying was because it was sad. The actual story itself breaks your heart open. But I also got upset with myself, because I found myself criticizing the story for it's improbability. And oddly, I'm not talking about the part where the husband travels through time; I'm talking about the way they were able to love. Maybe it's just because movies sensationalize love and turn it into something so impossible. Another friend of mine reminded me today that real people love in different ways, but that we do love, even if it's not like the movies.
One of the girls I had gone to watch the movie with and I were talking, and I made a a comment about how real life isn't like the movies. You'd think this would be obvious, but I seem to forget that a lot. I mean, how much of our time is spent watching TV shows or movies? I've woken up before and actually thought I had to go meet Summer from the OC (laugh all you want, I watched the entire first Season in a marathon with my brother the Christmas I was home sick from college). It's easy for made-up-commercials-every-15-minutes life to become something bigger than it should be. After all, it invades so much of our "real time."
But there are so few love stories that are real, and those ones get fictionalized and over-acted and over-produced, until you loose the reality of it. And my friend made a reference to the great love stories from History. I countered that I really think that our society has kind of imploded on itself and that the recent onslaught of over-communication and Internet/cell/phone/text/email communication makes our interactions so easy, so quick, so meaningless. Yeah, Napoleon wrote great love letters, but his letters took weeks to reach the object of his desire. His communication had to be important. If he could send a text, I doubt it would have been nearly as eloquent.
It's like Santa Clause or something, and at some age maybe you just start thinking it's silly to believe and you forget that it's not really believing in Santa Claus that makes the Holidays magical. Maybe it's the spirit of it. And we, as we age, stop remembering what the spirit of love feels like. I remember when I was in 1st grade and a classmate told me that there was no real Santa Claus, that his mom told him she put the presents under the tree, and furious I cried in class and called him a liar. I went home, confused, and asked my dad if it was true. Was Santa Claus really just a mean joke adults played on us innocent children? My dad looked me in the eye and told me that when I stopped believing in Santa Claus, then Santa stopped bringing me presents. Horrified, I pledged my undying loyalty to Mr. Cringle.
But, he also asked me, more importantly, did I still *want* to believe? Basically, what he was asking me was... does it matter? Does it matter if Santa is real or not? No. What matters is that you believe in him, and that Santa Claus isn't just about presents and candy canes at the mall. Santa Claus is really the ability, the gift if you will, of being able to feel the spirit of giving and love and fires and carrots left out for reindeer inside of you. Did I want to loose that feeling? No. And so I still believe in Santa Claus. So why can't I believe in love?
Love, unlike Santa Claus, is all around me. I see it every day. So I'm confused as to why I am so stuck on ignoring the possibility that I might, someday, fall in love again. Maybe it's the "in-love" part I have a problem with. Like, somewhere in adulthood the "in-love" part isn't as important anymore. But I think, as I get a little teary while writing this, that somewhere inside me I still believe I will meet someone again someday who knocks me off my feet, who quickens my heart a little bit. That I just might, fall in the impossible and improbable "in-love" place again. Until then, my heart is pretty full of a different, and maybe even better kind of love. A love for the people in my life that guide me and stand next to me, in front of me, and behind me. And in there is even a new love I'm getting better at acknowledging, a real love for myself.
Lots of impossible love,
Rio
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