Change of Mind: The Love Story

We have only briefly touched on the vast subject of what it means to be in love in English class, hence why I am looking to explore this idea further. in class, Actually, I would like to take a moment to try and partner what we have learned about love with our study of how to put pressure on our main characters in short stories. I wish to delve further into these two concepts because I think the way my thinking about the two separately has altered the way I view the two together--love stories--differently.

No matter who you are, it's hard not to be a sucker for love stories on some level, whether we want to laugh at how corny they are or cry when we get caught up in the sappiness of it all. Admittedly, I've done both.

However, I now realize that I was a sucker for the love, but not really the story. Do you know what I mean? If we have enough emotional intelligence, we can be touched and even feel like we're living vicariously through the characters while not realizing that there isn't really more than a camera, a couple of characters and a non-spontaneous script.

I guess the ones we cry at, though are the ones that aren't as cliche as we might've expected. I think that this can be attributed to something we discussed in our short story reading and writing--the concept of pressure being put on the main character(s). In the cases of quality love story books or movies (if you believe such things exist), the break-up doesn't qualify as the pressuring and pressing situation; it reaches far deeper into-- and hits home much harder for--the audience.

I am thinking right now about the movie Once which we recently finished viewing in class. Not only does it have an entirely realistic feel to it, but there are elements of the story, such as the female lead being in an unhappy, long-distance marriage, that makes it a variation on the classic "boy meets girl plot" which I think we can all agree we believe is now almost completely exhausted.

The way I thought about love, or rather the way society's perceptions pf it have been demonstrated to me, is that it often comes wrapped in a bow and is always meant-to-be. On the contrary, I only believed love-at-first-sight to exist in very rare cases. What I'm trying to say is that after watching this movie, I have truly learned of love's imperfections and the sting that can accompany such a strong and irresistible attraction between two people. In combination with the "love" aspect of my thoughts, I learned (not just through Once) that the pressure placed on the main characters usually only strengthens the bond. This is why it will now irk me to sit through films or read books where the love between two strengthens without having serious pressure put on the main characters because, quite circularly, there is almost no other way the "L"-word, in its emotional sense, can be strengthened.

Despite the fictitious nature of the movie we watched and some of the stories which we have examined, I think it's safe to say that they have, in a sense, grounded me and my perceptions about such complex topics as love. When I get there, the formative time where I fall in love with someone in the future, the insights of love from Once and the lessons about pressure being a necessity from our short story study will not be forgotten.