On Love

It's scary, how romantic love is always justified.

It didn't strike me until some time recently, when I first noticed a common link between all the love stories, love songs, and real-life romances out there. And that was, every romance is somehow completely, unequivocally, unflinchingly justified by the parties involved.

Of course, it's a good thing when people fall in love. But consider that love, as a raw, pure emotion, often relinquishes little control to logic and sense. Could there be situations when love drives one to do what would normally not be right?

Consider the song My Boo performed in the video above. "And though there's another man who's in my life, you will always be my boo."

Consider Romeo & Juliet, which may merely be a work of fiction, but which stands for the oft-propagated message that unadulterated love is worth dying for, worth defying one's parents for. There are perhaps only half a billion other love stories where parental disapproval is similarly shrugged off.

Consider Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher who maintains to this day that she is truly in love with the (then) young boy she abandoned her family for. You can read more about her here, in case you're not familiar with her story.

I think what happens is that people in love suddenly find themselves the living emissaries, the breathing ambassadors of love. Suddenly, against the backdrop of a gloomy world beset by too many painful realities, they are the only shining beacons of what is right, what should be, and they set out to prove that their love can conquer all.

In fortuitous cases, people fall in love without causing too much disruption to the order of the world around them.

Other times, in their quest to see their love come to fruition, people go to extreme lengths. Regardless of the obligations or obstacles facing them, people tell themselves that if they can only love deeply enough, they will overcome everything else, that since love is so rare, they are fully justified to pursue it to its end.

It's a pity then when these obligations or obstacles are ones which when abandoned, do cause very real harm to other people. Marriage vows to the wandering husband are obstacles, and so are friendship ties to she who covets her best friend's boyfriend, and so on.

Funny thing still, eh, how humans are still so very enraptured by watching only the budding love stories? You never read about how Mary Kay's first family are surviving her abandonment and betrayal. You never hear that unnamed boyfriend in "My Boo" sing his side of the story, about how he feels knowing that his love is off singing songs with Usher.

To say that one would always give in to love's demands is selfish, and irresponsible. To say that one would always fulfill obligations before love, is to be robotic, mercenary, cold.

Heh. Not an easy task balancing, at all.