A VALENTINE CARD

Oooooohhh! I can't believe I forgot that Valentines Day was coming. If I'd remembered I'd have done something special for the occasion because I believe in it. It's important. It's a holiday that actually carries philosophical weight.

Romantic love, as the troubadours sang about it in the Middle Ages, helped to establish the modern notion of liberty. If your feelings for another person are recognized to be equal to, or sometimes even transcend your obligation to the state, then your happiness acquires political importance. Whether the troubadours knew it or not, they were planting the idea in peoples' minds that individuals were important, that they had a right to pursue their own happiness. Romantic love is a powerful assertion that you have a right to live for your own sake, and that states have to recognize that.

I also believe in romantic love because I think it's the best way for most people to find happiness. I'm well aware that there are people who do just fine without it, and other people who've actually come to grief because of it. Nevertheless, for the average man its the golden path to companionship, family and peace of mind. I'm tempted to add intellectual vitality to that list, but that would be a controversial assertion that I might not be able to defend in a short post.




Here's (above) a clip from the 1968 film, "Romeo and Juliet." I love how it shows the lovers tuning everyone else in the room out. I love the way two people who were strangers only fifteen minutes before, would now risk their lives to be with each other. I'm a big believer in love at first sight. When you meet the person who's right for you, it hits you like ton of bricks, and the film managed to capture that. The clip starts a bit awkwardly, so give it a minute to find its pace.

I'll end with a quote from "Moonstruck," a terrific film by Norman Jewisson. Nicholas Cage delivers this line to Cher:

“…I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn’t know this either — but love don’t make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves, and to break our hearts, and love the wrong people, and die. The storybooks are bullshit! Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!”


Wow! There's lots to discuss there, maybe sometime in the future.