Love Grows

The world is covered with a thin film of inertia. Maybe it is created by entropy, or human nature, or a magic yet-understood, or all three. Divine beings pierce it effortlessly, Let there be light is a powerful command. We can pierce this inertia too, with a little effort. In fact it seems like the more difficult part is recognizing it at all. And when we look the other way, it regrows.

~ ~ ~

There is an unseriousness about love that permeates a lot of modern media. We must all feed, however meekly, on the art around us, so this unseriousness transfers into the attitudes of people. This builds up the layer of inertia.

Part of the unseriousness comes from the idea that love is something one finds: Usually by chance, possibly by slipping into it, ideally (in movies and modern books) in the most comical and light-hearted way imaginable. Outside of media, people have accepted this frame of chance: there is heavy reliance on apps and algorithms and chance to do their matchmaking, and consequently they adopt a flippant attitude. Even the enthusiastic advice giver cannot often see beyond a few aleatory phrases, like “It all works out in the end”, “Dating is a numbers game”. These feel misleading to me, because they imply that if one keeps doing the same timid actions, or no actions at all, that love will eventually appear. It might, just as fortune might show herself to the lottery ticket purchaser, but it seems unwise to expect it. Yet I think some art coaches precisely that attitude.

This modern conception lacks responsibility and also, I think, desire. If love is found then it is not sought, or built. It is a thing that happens to you, rather than something you participate in. There is an old movie, Annie Hall (1977), where this fatalism is epitomized. It depicts a meandering romance, mostly for the sake of inserting absurdities and jokes. After one falling out, the protagonist mopes about the streets asking bystanders to explain his situation to him:

ALVY
Is it-is it something that I did?

WOMAN ON THE STREET
It’s never something you do. That's how people are. Love fades.

She moves on down the street.

ALVY
(Scratching his head)
Love fades. God, that's a depressing thought.

The scene encapsulates the attitude: Love was something found, if it starts to falter — something it does on its own! — then it can’t be helped, and things fall apart. It ascribes more intent to vague forces (or no force at all) than to one’s own actions. The movie ends on the same note, with the two separated despite Alvy wishing otherwise. The movie ends with a monologue that is practically a shrug, and he declares that despite wanting them, relationships are simply absurd and without reason. Unable to seek or build, even though he is lucky enough to fall into a relationship, he is unable to sustain it. His introspection does nothing but render him helpless.

~ ~ ~

“Let there be light.”

Life is full of chance, but this does not mean outcomes are random. Rather than living in response to chance, one should be looking for ways to guide it. Introspection and yearning ought to be coupled with action towards one’s desires. Without this action, there is no desire beyond the fleeting, and no fruit beyond happenstance. The failure mode on display in Annie Hall is immense introspection without any actioned desire at all. The protagonist is unable to pierce the inertia, and it’s no mystery that the relationship falls apart.

Love is not only found in happenstance, but grows, in the way that gardens grow. In other words, it exists primarily when someone chooses to grow it. You have to do the planning and selection and care and pruning, not once, but continuously. From yearning to bonding, love is a collection of intentional acts. If you do not treat it as such, you will find yourself in a world that feels more helpless and callous than it really is.

Some people wait on a crucial step, the madness of love, to arrive as something that happens to them, or even for them. They do not consider that it is a deliberate choice. Possibly this is poor art priming people. Or possibly it is our defensive nature — it is difficult to deliberately nurture an intense devotion, if reciprocity is so uncertain. So a layer of inertia grows.

No one can live well in your stead. It has to be your choice. You can pierce it if you want to.

s s

This is a continuation of the thoughts in quests, failure, desire.

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The etching is by Ferdinand Leenhoff, after William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1883. Leenhoff inscribed “The Fight”, but Bougueru’s painting is usually titled Young Girl Defending Herself Against Cupid