Vincent Kardos
English 101: Critical Reasoning
Essay Two: Definition of Love
15 November 2009
Describe what Love is!
“What is Love?” One may ask themselves, when they should be asking, “where does love come from?” Love must be the ability to “love” love itself, is it not? One must know where love originates and examine why in order to know what love is. Whether subconscious, hidden, or fully exposed, love is without a word of splendor, it is splendor in spirit; after all, much like true happiness, it is the journey that makes one happy, not the result. Mark one’s own love of the universe and it will compensate dull times, lest one hates the universe. Hate can spur love for another as well; not absolute love, but a more irenic palpable version. One is unmistakable in knowing that almost everyone has a different kind of love expression but from what things may love derive from? Romance? Lust? Hate?
Romantic love is like the kind of innocent blissful ignorance blemished from a moment of being forever spoilt by another, unknowingly becoming the kind of addiction that goes along with an addictive personality. Much like a poem of yearning expression for something enquired, like Susan Minot’s whiny narration in the poem of Lust, speaking as if “You’re gone. That their blank look tells you that the girl they were fucking is not there anymore. You seem to have disappeared” (262). Or the story of the wishful wife and husband in Girls in their Summer Dresses, by Irwin Shaw, who plead for equality in a destabilized relationship (352-357); both stories always questioning and always wanting more, a more romantic love. Speaking “truly” is the unequaled meaning in comprehension of the scenario, easily represented in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, with Joel’s forgotten longing to be sought out by the girl named Clementine. Clementine may end up finding Joel, but the journey of seeking the one looking to be sought is the true romance. Love can be a very hoarse thing when thought of by the broken or divided, the crushed and debilitated, or the loved then lost, but romantic love is the extension of evidence that one must keep on living and never give up for another. The clarity of pursuit becomes that much clearer when romance becomes the dominant. A whole army, poised for utter destruction, cannot defeat the undying rebel that is romantic love for another. Romantic love will always prevail, imbue the pursuer, and live forever. When and if captured, one has succumbed to the revelry, and the lust.
Lust. The felicitous instinct humans have retained from primal relatives without care for the primal relatives themselves. Maybe lust is described best as a truculent emotion towards someone or something as if they are a temporary object at any given moment of one’s immediate infatuation. In Sealed with a Kiss the writer, Jim Shahin, recalls his galumphing success of his first kiss (98). He incites experiences of what he called romantic love of the girl he kissed, saying, “I wrote poems and mailed them to her. I even daydreamed about marrying her.” but by October this feeling was gone and the girl was nothing but an object of accomplishing his first awkward kiss. Jim experienced the fugacious milieu of summertime lust. This kind of agog titillation is expertly conveyed by Oscar Wilde’s poem, Silentium Amoris, where he reveals to himself in an anatomical fashion, “So my too stormy passions work me wrong. And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.” “Else it were better we should part, and go, Thou to some lips of sweeter melody, And I to nurse the barren memory Of unkissed kisses, and songs unsung.” In his poem Wilde confides in himself what is obvious – lust – and moves on carefully and securely; although sadly and with unactualized dreams, but moving on nonetheless without a whim of hate.
Hate is by definition the opposite of love. This idea poses a surprising threat in one’s mind, one that is capital in punishment. Teresa McGinnis in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love had received so much hateful beatings from a relationship with her ex-husband, which essentialized her feelings towards him with that of love (Carver 138). Love like this is like a hose you find yourself drowning yourself with. This is not unheard of as many people are beaten to the point of feeling cared for, possibly through gratefulness or maybe a sick sensation; either way I do not personally agree with people who practice or partake in this kind of love but I do understand where love like this may come from. Before I attended college as much as I do now I had a crazed abysmal hate for the world I resided in; the world did not appeal to me as an ideal place for one to live. After years of maundering this mental and physical torture I envisioned what a perfect world would be like, what a world one like me should be able to live in without hate. Thus burgeoned a passionate love for the future. I am now on that path towards a determined future, one I can ameliorate for everyone. This is my kind of love.
As one can see, the derivatives ultimately determine the love presented. When Joel and Clementine found themselves to be an unmatchable couple near the end of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, they still understood love can continue as long as they were “okay” with each other’s problems. They were truly in love, taking into account everything that composed that love, a few being romance, lust, and hate. When one asks themselves “What is love?” They may find love through self discovery. You cannot just ask anyone, you must know from your own experience, and ask thyself. As Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ended the lyrics were played, “everybody’s got to learn sometime” (Campbell track 9).
Sources:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Dir. Michel Gondry. Focus Features, 2004.
Wilde, Oscar.”Silentium Amoris.” Famous Poets And Poems . com. 5 November 2009.
Campbell, Beck. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Original Soundtrack.”
Hollywood Records, 2004.
