Current mood:	apathetic
Entry tags:	define it

Define It: Romance

Romance

    Romance, the ideal of millions for which they search with all their hearts and souls, drawn on by their as yet still delusional belief that there is such a thing as perfection in the world, is a thing that calls to many but is solid and true for few. Embedded in its letters amidst velvet drapes and soft candlelight is the strange, human desire for something that will bind another to them, that will lead to eternal devotion and happiness for all time. From this is spawned the millions of books, movies, songs, plays, and more all circling around the one concept of romance—all drawing hordes of thirsty admirers to the storefronts and theaters, gluing their eyes to TV screens and turning simple human beings into rising, immortal stars. And yet…this ideal—this dream—is, for most at least, nothing but that.

          Look for example upon the story of Romeo and Juliet, the story that myriads have proclaimed a classic work of romance. The characters in this play have been used to describe those who are supposedly madly in love, and yet this thing they call love is nothing more than the love of how another looks—a standard that is sadly superior in most modern minds. Like those of our darkening world, these two met only briefly—a day, in their case—and decide in that vastly limited span of hours that they are so deeply in love that they must marry and will die if the other is not there to carry the burden of life with them for the rest of eternity. And yet Romeo, the supposed romantic, was pining similarly for another woman but earlier that day. This sudden morph of interests is the mark of the insincere who believe wholeheartedly in themselves. It is what has been taken to be love but is only a love for beauty, something that has been adopted without question by almost all who dwell in our own time.

          The need to create happiness through the eternal loyalty of another never considered the loyalty of the self, and thus this need is a sign of one’s own weakness and selfish desire because to leave one’s own happiness in the hands of another’s fate is to give up one’s own control of life and long that way for happiness. It is perhaps not true in all case, but there is always something more than the simple element of romance that is all most consider before leaping into these chaotic waters. It is folly to seek only for the flowers and the letters because candlelit dinners cannot last a lifetime.

          Those who promise it either do not understand the true rigors of dedicated life or are lying through their teeth.