Febraury 14: V-Day

You know? Shakespeare receives an awful lot of credit for being the master of romantic love, but I have to respectfully disagree. He certainly knew a lot about it, there’s no doubt about that. But he’s not the only one. Romeo and Juliet was a masterpiece, there’s no denying it, but there’s been little said about other powerful authors who’ve told equally, if not more so, spellbinding love stories. Austen, Bronte, Tolkien, Alcott, just to name a few. You want a handbook to romantic love? The story tellers, artists, musicians and dreamers who’ve experienced it are the ones to hunt down. I believe with all of my heart that artists and writers and musicians were put on this earth to explain the most complicated chambers of our souls to those who don’t have the ability to express what’s on the inside. Everyone has a purpose. It may not seem functional or necessary to the practical, intellectual minded, but artists interpret a part of life that cannot be attained through textbook reasoning, and love is one of those parts of life that artists interpret for all of us, to connect us. And we need connection. We all have a purpose and everyone is connected by those purposes. While some are inventing the next big thing to hit the technology market, others are writing powerful novels about love; others are painting a portrait of the deepest parts of their soul, illustrating what can’t be put into words or technology; musicians are writing songs with powerful poetry that unravels what so many of us can’t figure out about our own selves; all of them giving us a way to see what’s on the inside.

Love is here for everyone whether or not it’s understood, received or declined, given or not given. Romantic love is something the very few chosen in the universe experience on a more divine, intense level than the rest of us, and who actually have the ability to attain it, keep it, and die with it. Austen must’ve known a thing or two on the matter to have written Pride and Prejudice… Bronte must’ve known a darker, more grounded edge to love to have written Jane Eyre…. Tolkien was in love with his wife until the very end, homage paid thrice over with his creation of Aragorn and Arwen… And Alcott seemed to be a woman who must’ve always known exactly what she wanted and wouldn’t take anything less than the real thing. What is the real thing? Austen fell in love with a bad boy who was too poor to take her hand in marriage. Bronte was the spitting image of her beloved Jane Eyre: did she too fall in love with a man like Mr. Rochester? Tolkien and his wife-to-be used to sit on a café balcony and throw sugar cubes into the hats of passersby below. Alcott never married and was quoted, “…because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls, and never once the least bit with any man…”

We all have our own story. Some of us want to share it in hopes there are others who can relate. We all want happy endings but we lose sight of what a real-life happy ending really means. There is no ending. Life and love move on until our graves.

Your first love falls through? It’ll come again. And if it doesn’t, there’s worse that could happen to you.

Fall in love with someone unattainable? Maybe your story ends like Jane’s, and maybe it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, you move on.

Find the love of your life? Someone who loves you back just as equally, just as thrillingly, just as true? Don’t mess it up. They’re your best friend and love for life, and you’re one of the very few chosen by the universe to have it. If you mess that up then you didn’t deserve to have it in the first place.

Haven’t found the real thing? What you’re looking for? There are worse things to be than single. Trust me.

To those who are in love, cheers to you on this frivolous celebration of romance: there are plenty of us who envy you. To those who are not in love? Allow me to recommend that you live vicariously through the artists who’ve told their stories either by novel, by music, by poem, sonnet, painting, or film. There’s nothing like being swept away by someone else’s drama, moved through someone else’s interpretation of what love did for them. For me, love taught me that my soul is capable of extraordinary things. Love taught me that happiness is in the eye of the beholder. Love taught me what I truly valued in other human beings, specifically the opposite sex. Love taught me that even though it can be dreadfully painful, through it all it is always worth it. Love reminds us that we have a soul, a functioning spirit. Without that, we’d be empty. We’d be nothing more than the shell of a demon, a monster, a sociopath surviving on instincts alone. Love completes us, no matter what sort of love it is. I? Am complete.