There is love, big love, and then theres great love.
"Love you get over in two months.
Big love you get over in two years.
And great love, well great love...it changes your life."
Today i watched "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton" again, the first time since when i first saw it in the cinemas back in 2004. I seem to have forgotten how sweet the movie actually was. Back then, i was just a tiny 3rd former. I had seen it with Susan, my childhood friend who was about to move to Australia. She was my first friend in New Zealand, and we really had a special kind of friendship. Our friendship was purely platonic, she was like a sister to me. We played together countless times growing up, yet this movie was only the second movie we ever saw together, and it was to be our last. After the movie, we went to a family friends house where a farewell party was being held for her and her parents. At the time, i was obsessed with some other girl. All i could do was go on about how she was my "Tad Hamilton" that night. Yet as i left the house knowing that i wouldnt see Susan again, a little part of me seemed to have been left behind. I know this sounds very cliched. You see in movies all the time where the main character looks forlornly into the night sky and whispers "a little part of me died that night". Well, its true. There was a physical sensation within my chest that a part of me was no longer there.The only way i can describe it to you so that you may understand is that it felt as if a part of my chest was physically removed. There was a sensation of absence with the cavity of my chest. It felt empty. An inexplicable feeling of sadness seemed to just wash over me. It smothered me. I realised that Susan was more than just a friend to me. She was something else. I guess that's why they say the only way we can know what we have is to lose it.
"Do you think it is possible to love someone your entire life and never realize it?"
I think that the bonds you forge growing up, will be the strongest kind of bonds you'll ever make in life. You might meet a thousand different people later on in life, but you will never have that same level of connection. The friendship is almost automatic, its subconscious, ingrained into your soul. There is a kind of familiarity between the two of you that is at once esoteric yet at the same time so commonplace, like knowing the lines in your palm. In the movie, Peter had known Rosie for 22 years. There was no other man that couldve known her the way he did (well maybe except for her father but thats a little bit creepy). She was literally the love of his life. The notion of being in love with someone who you know every little detail about and which you love her for, is just so painfully romantic. It is the kind of love that you will never experience again in life. The kind of love that most people will never get to experience in life.
Lately ive realised that my dad and i have radically different ideologies. He is a realist, while i am a romanticist. Perhaps this is just a matter of lack of real life experience on my part, but i think that even at the age of 47, i will still have a sense of the ethereal within me. He has been constantly trying to drill the idea that a successful career and a stable job are the fundamental ingredients to finding love. While i acknowledge that financial stability is a vital component of a successful relationship, the romantic within me cannot accept the fact that money is the answer to love. I would rather live a life of bachelorhood, than marry out of convenience. I know that there is no such thing as The One, unless it simply means the one person you will marry such as when you say "i think shes the one". But the kind of love that Peter and Rosie have, thats what i want. Thats what i want in life. I dont care about fortune or fame. I just want to be able to live a happy life with the one i love, and my two kids (a son and a daughter in case you were wondering). These days, the only thing that truly scares me is that its too late for me to find this kind of love. I'm 20 years old. I'll study and then become moderately successful and get a stable job and get introduced to a girl, and she'll be pretty and smart and mentally stable and we'll get along well and we'll think that we're in love and we'll be comfortable and after a short while we'll get married and we'll have kids but the love will fizzle out after a few years and we'll maintain the marriage out of convenience and for the sake of our children and we'll grow old together and we won't sleep in the same bed and we bicker all the time but we'll tolerate each other because we're all that we have left and then we'll die. That's not what i want. You could call me naive, or unrealistic, or whatever the fuck you want. But seriously, why are we even here? There's got to be more to life.
LOL... the things that movies have done to this generation of young men.
ReplyDeleteFrom a psychological point of view, this kind of love is actually very common. Because they have known each other for so long, the time of association is massive (hence the sayings 'the girl next door' etc etc). Maybe we don't all need 22 years to find out what 'great love' is, some of the lucky ones - or should I say, more hard working ones - end up fulfilling this so called love that they seek within a much shorter amount of time. I personally believe that such an extended period of 'fate' can be less effective on 'love' compared with love which one has worked so hard to achieve. We learn to cherrish what we have put effort into and take for granted those that just fall our way. So maybe Peter and Rosie were destined to be together, but that's just what the movie has portrayed. In reality, of course Peter would have needed less effort due to the pre-existing fate, but fate can only take you so far and the rest is for you to make happen. If Tad hadn't foolishly mentioned her smiles and if Peter hadn't done anything, things would probably turned out differently.
I'm not saying falling in love with someone you've known all your life is a bad thing, I'm just pointing out that you probably have a better chance at this 'love' you young boys these days are looking for if you put your heart on making something of something than hoping for something that's not there. Maybe once in a trillion times all the stars line up and everything falls perfectly into place, but even then, who knows what will happen after the movie has finished?
I feel as if many people today have lost their ambition to succeed in things, they all want to take a short cut and hope that everything will go their way. With relationships even, it's never all movie like with someone that fits perfectly into the mold you imagine, everything takes effort. So one should dedicate and work hard in achieving something they desire than to sit back passively and hope that somehow it will be perfect. I'm just sayin'~
But that kind of love, the kind that you grow up with and is ingrained within your very being, almost unconditional and instinctual like the love you hold for your family, have you ever thought that that kind of love fizzles out too? At least the romantic part of it? The instinctual part may always be there but over time the passion will die out. The human heart wants strong emotions, often we're not satisfied with the same thing for a life time. It may be what you want now, but people change a lot over the years.
ReplyDeleteStill, I know what you mean. None of our generation really wants to end up in an "asian" marriage, a marriage to someone respectable because you have to raise a family or else you'll be too old, and you can't divorce because it'll be a major emotional disruption in your children's upbringing.