love

Love is a funny thing...what makes you fall in love with someone or conversely fall out of love? I'm about to get married and it sometimes amazes me just how much I love this man - even when we're fighting.

I watched another movie tonight, "Republic of Love" which was an adaptation of a Carol Shields novel. Set in Toronto it chronicles the love affair between a man who's already had three marriages and a woman who's searching for her soulmate because she wants the amazing love that her parents have. It's interesting because it illustrates just how much we all want to be loved and to love someone and the lengths we'll go to get it; yet amidst all that there is sometimes another very powerful emotion - fear. And that fear can make us do really stupid things, things that really hurt us. The ironic part is that we often think that our fear-based actions will ultimately prevent us from getting hurt. And so it is in the movie. Thankfully it was a movie and it had a happy ending. Unfortunately reality doesn't always work that way.

There's a scene in the movie where the parent's marriage falls apart and the husband says "I felt smothered by her love" when he's trying to explain why he left. Then I wonder to myself if it's possible to love someone too much or if you can kill someone with love. I suppose anything's possible...yet I think it unlikely after all love is a good thing...how can it possibly be harmful?

Something interesting though, one of the techniques used when filming was to drain the colour down to the bare minimum when things were going wrong in the relationships, illustrating the lack of life when there is lack of love; and of course when things were going well then the colour came in full blast. Kinda cool and very apropro.

If you're out there and you're in love, enjoy it; try not to hold onto it too hard for love is frail in its strength; let go of any expectations you might've had about how things should be for life and love never follow the scripts in our head; and if you're out there and not in love yet then stay aware and alert for love pops up in the most unexpected places at the oddest times...it's got a bent sense of humour that one.