thoughts on (ideals of) love

i am watching a movie, ‘Anna Karenina’ (which i highly recommend that you watch, because not only is the storytelling rich and immersive, but the cinematography is unique in a very theatre-esque way that i cannot describe), and it dawns upon me that what you said the other day is entirely true - that love and adoration is subject to a person’s current wants and needs, susceptible to change at the slightest perturbation, and victim of our whims and malleability of being human. and though this is not something new to me - that any emotion be fluctuant with the mood of the day - it disturbs me to think that an ideal so entrenched in society as listed above is so subjective, so precarious, so sensitive, that our own perceptions of that ideal between individuals is nigh incompatible. to others, the idealisation of love is different things - a comprehensive and almost unintelligible letter written in Victorian nuance and delivered in hand, a subtlety of unspoken words like between the protagonists of a Korean drama, an accent alleviated by a favourite language, the first glimpse through a proverbial veil that Egyptian princesses hold as dear as Japanese country-folk, and in the case of Anna Karenina as i am learning to appreciate, the empathic projection of a strong but sorrowful Russian tragedy. please, do not mistake my blatantness and lack of examples as a sign of ignorance or naivety. i have always known that if i were to base my utopian postulations of love on the writings of Austen, or Dostoyevsky, or Rumi, or Marcia, or Poe; i would, but for a sliver of a chance be disappointed time and again in the search for realisation - or at least for reciprocation. and to this, i submit, that the sacrifice of perfection is a necessary (but small) price to pay for the attaining of that which i idealise itself - love. but this is a far cry from acknowledging that it does not exist. if anything, i am a person of compromise, and should any hint of such concession be available, i would embrace it whole-heartedly.


this being said, i do not think i empathise with your feeling that love is not absolute (and you must pardon the use of the term ‘absolute love’, as you have aptly pointed out, there is no such thing, and my use of it bears only from the necessity of distinguishing an absolute form of adoration from a relative one). what you have said that love will change with time and place, is true - and though my lack of personal experience dictates i cannot say with any amount of authority, i find it dreary and distraught to believe that any change in such a strong emotion can warrant disengaging from a love. i feel that it is ironic that relationships are built on a wider base than once before (no longer do we extrapolate from dainty eyes meeting from across a room, or flitting fingers from a series of waltzes through the night, or shied smiles behind a curtain when elders come in stead of a wanting and proposing young man, or curved that writing that letters delivered in person in the shroud of starless nights), the imperative to propagate it is left with so much to desire. is it not designed that the opposite should be? that if there is anything to hold with unyielding devotion, beyond religion and family and friends, it should be the preservation of (a) love? i am not sure i am convinced, but i hope it is not wrong for me to want (and hope). regardless of peoples’ motives and how they go about realising such things (or abandoning, as i would distastefully warrant), i feel that, if only by semantics and definition for my own sake, love should be held at a post higher than something that is so mercurial and fleeting, and that once it is attained, there should be no questioning what it is.

parallel to this train of though, it would be pertinent to point out that i do not pretend to comprehend any of this. wherefore i should continually ask you for opinions and advice is because of this lack of understanding; do not belittle that i should want to understand something complex, far beyond me. if anything, i hope it is admirable that i try, for even in failure, i can only hope to think of myself as having searched, if never having to find. perhaps love really is purely utopian, and any manifestation of it in this world is a meek shadow of what it should be, and not having gazed upon its splendour is only befitting for those who worship it far too much. mayhap it is in vilifying love and bringing it down from a pedestal that we can truly begin to bask in its exaltation - and as such, it is better that any semblance of love that i may have in my mind stay there, lest it be defiled by something more ‘real’ and flawed.

p/s: do watch Anna Karenina if you get the chance. i have yet to complete it myself due to other commitments, but from what i have watched, it reminds me fondly of ‘the brothers Karamazof’, and i think you will like it very much.