On The Permanence of Love

Upon securing a romantic conception of love, we all tend to seduce ourselves into romantic optimism, that the creatures we have successfully located are the ones from our dreams. Though countless novels and films often remind us of instances of breaking up, though thousands of songs often warn us how unstable love can be, though experience confirms us how fragile it can be, deep inside we all still wish to appease our romantic yearnings with our unshakable faith in its indestructibility and stability. If our longing for love seems so inevitable, would the heavens smile on us and ferry our wounded souls to a place where it can promise us with the perpetual existence of love?

During the first few months after we fall in love, we are often left with no choice but harbour a wish that she must be the one we are going to spend our rest of our life with. If love aims at communication and understanding, then it suggests that there lies a paradoxical, depressingly inverse goal in love which completely runs counter to its original intention. Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love are those whom we know nothing. Our attraction for our beloved ones stems not from our constant intimacy with them, but rather our lack of understanding of them. Though our close acquaintance with them at one level brings us closer with each other, but at another level it suggests that they are also stripped of defences and subject to physical and mental scrutiny. Whether they do not look as good without makeup, whether their tastes in fashion and books conflict with ours, whether they pick their noses vigorously without using handkerchief, what are previously thought as angels are immediately condemned as material beings, susceptible to cold light of criticisms. How easy our fantasy can be interrupted by our need to fathom one's soul.

If our expectations of love are contrary to what the reality suggests, it is because we naively think the ones we are with now are those whom we fell in love with at first glance. While most of us consider life a process of becoming mature, we seldom think our partners submit themselves to the same process. The modern world, with the help of technology, is changing with an incalculable speed. Our lives are filled with various experiences which are deemed too implausible to be identical with others. Is it sane to think what constitutes our partners' souls will remain the same? Is it sensible to secure our love of regularity for those who operate within the same mortal coil? If our desires and opinions are susceptible to change as time varies, why, then, can't we expect the same from our partners? The same burden no longer inhabits the same soul. Most of us are in fact not aware of our blind submission to Platonic utopia where eternity is praiseworthy and change is despised.

Until this point, it seems we are necessarily driven to the conclusion that love cannot last. Our romantic fantasy is only an illusion. But does that mean we are enforced to endorse the view of romantic pessimism? That our journey of love must inevitably be accompanied by intervals of happiness and despair? If love can offer conclusive evidence of our existence, perhaps it suggest that we look at love from the wrong perspective. Love often conspires to impute similarities rather than investigate differences. However much our tastes and opinions conflict with theirs, there are always great numbers of things we find agreement on that have caused us to fall in love in the first place which seems churlish to deny that we are not meant for each other. The impossibility to reject the invitation of romantic fatalism urges our minds to be full of wonder why a person who is seemingly a different species can command her mind with fluidity to articulate our opinions and tastes in the same sophistication or even better. If love is about bonding us with what is identical, then perhaps romantic love should be seen as a process of self-understanding. Our partners are like full-length mirrors, forcing us to reflect our verdict of them on ourselves, delivering us knowledge of who we are and what we want to become. Our despair at romantic love comes from the fact that we see it as an ends rather than a means, a destination that we have longed for rather than stops in our journey of life.

But if we have to insist on making love last, then we may be compelled to take Marcel Proust's advice, namely, infidelity. However, he does not encourage us to actually perform the act, but only through the threat of it. So long as we are creatures of habits and liable to grow contemptuous of what is familiar, the only hope to make relationships last is to induce our partners to believing that they might suffer the loss of their beloved. Jealousy may serve as a temporary cure for boredom which leads our partners to realise they may not appreciate us at its richest and fullest. In return , they may do things in order to assure themselves amorous possession again. The only drawback is perhaps the repetitions of infidelity whenever boredom kicks in.

If our longing for romantic love has to be excused from sorrow and grief, we must revise certain notions of it and attach it to more a "correct" and "just" value. We need to learn to entertain the inevitable incompatibilities of love and construct a new philosophy regarding its nature. However much love can torment our souls, it makes our mortality bearable. It makes our life take on a certain value which is not trivial. Love can offer as much optimism if we learn to love properly.

W