Valentine’s Day is going to be here soon. It’s the only holiday in February that really deserves any attention. I don’t get presents for Groundhog Day so who cares what a little beaver-looking thing sees or doesn’t see. Valentine’s Day is what I’m interested in, and more importantly, what it’s all about: This concept of love.
Poets have written about ancient love: Love that existed since the first man saw the first woman. In “Paradise Lost,” John Milton wrote about Adam and Eve’s relationship:
“Maker Omnipotent; and thou the day,
Which we in our appointed work employed,
Have finished, happy in our mutual help
And mutual love, the crown of all our bliss.”
What is this mutual love that Milton refers to? Does love even exist? In my opinion, curses to love, all the pain and pleasure it has caused, all the wars and personal conflict that follows behind it. Love is just a curse given to us from a higher power that doesn’t want us to see a bigger picture.
No matter where you’re from, you have some sort of love in your culture. Love is an extreme on the emotional spectrum, with hate being on the opposite side. Then there’s all the gray area in between.
Love in a way is like communism: It works on paper but not in real life. Or for the scientist, it’s like trying to achieve absolute zero: You can get infinitely close but never reach it.
Just look at Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. Even the tabloids were on their side, saying they were “in love,” what happened? Brad goes off with Angelina. (We can hope that they sell clones of their kid to the public. I’d like a 22-year-old female clone, please). Real love would be a relationship where both parties involved want each other around no matter what, even when neither of them is getting anything in return — not even sex. How many people can say they honestly have that? No one that I know. Perfect love should even exist outside of sexual attraction.
The Beatles sang, “All You Need is Love.” Hogwash! All you need is intelligence, or a diploma at least. If anything, love is a distraction. We spend our entire life to find it, people fight wars for it – is that loss of time and life really worth love? There are tales of thousands of people dying in the Trojan War for the affection of Helen of Troy. Romeo and Juliet died in pursuit of their love (or blind lust, depending on who taught it to you in middle school). In the real world people kill themselves for love. Something that is by definition perfect shouldn’t be this harmful to the people who search for it.
It’s probably a better idea not to worry about if it’s real or not, and just live life and have fun with it. The time you spend worrying about love could instead be spent inventing the cure for cancer or something else more productive.