We're all horrible sometimes, aren't we? We can all be boring Bellas or crazy Catherines, controlling Edwards and immature Romeos. Sometimes we don't make sense, and sometimes we don't have a clue.
When we get to be the audience, the critics, it's so easy to read or watch love stories and think, "Oh my gosh, what does he/she see in him/her???"
But isn't that part of love? Anyone whose been in love has to know the wonder of realizing that somebody knows you-for all your good and bad- and they still choose you, they want to chase you and care for you and adore you.
In some love stories it seems like the characters are almost blinded by love, so that they can't see the
others faults (admittedly, this is more true in Romeo and Juliet's case for me than the other two stories I have chosen to discuss. However, since Romeo and Juliet is a play, it would be impossible for the audience not to notice the characters imperfections.)
However, I like to think that it is not blindness to faults which allows the lover to pass over imperfection, but rather the nature of true love, and it's amazing ability to instill the ultimate trust....because it takes that trust to put your vunerable, flawed self in someone's hands and believe that they will embrace you. Likewise that same trust is required to risk everything you have for the love of a person who will, inevitably, let you down at some point. It's saying, "I risk it all for you, knowing that there will be good and bad, but not knowing what the bad will be. Whatever the bad is, it is worth it for the good. Even more, I trust you to do the same."
All true love requires such faith, on both ends.
Love demands that one sacrifices his or her own selfishness. Love requires that you let the ugly out. Love requires that you take everything of another person.
So in these stories, isn't it good that the main characters aren't perfect? What would we learn if they were?
But it seems, many of the most impactful stories require an even greater test of this trust.
Take the three stories I mentioned in yesterday's post, for example: Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, Twilight. All of different time periods and calibers yet all three highly successful stories centered around forbidden love.
What is it about forbidden love? Something beyond the "forbidden fruit" aspect, I think.
Forbidden love is so strange because it takes something which is universally accepted to be good and puts it in a setting in which it becomes BAD.
Love becomes, for once, dispicable, to all except the lovers themselves.
"Do not love that person, it's unnatural. You will be cast out for it. You will be disowned. It will literally kill you."
Yet, all the characters in forbidden love stories fight that message, again and again, even though it comes from what we would assume to be highly influential sources to them. Despite everything their worlds try to tell them, they choose love anyway. Having never faced that situation myself, it's a little hard to imagine. From the standpoint of the reader/audience, we realize this on a cognitive level, but I think
most of us don't really put ourselves in those shoes: It would take some strength to fight everything else in your world for love's sake.
And the forbidden love thing really only emphasizes the internal battle of the love that most of us experience day-to-day. Sure, many of us are not "forbidden" to love our paramours. However, our internal worlds make it hard enough. "What if they realize that we are not perfect? Do we dare risk our reputations? The image that we have maintained so far? Do we dare risk losing the persom whom we declare to love by being vulnerable? Exposed?"
And indeed, to love truly, we must risk these things, or not know true love at all. For love demands a great revealing, and in the revelation, we all inevitably show ourselves to be but flawed characters.
But, if we can manage this, we open ourselves up to the greatest of love stories.
No comments:
Post a Comment