In 1950, wearing a tailored dress and glass shoes, Cinderella danced with the sweetest prince in all the land and sang “So this is love, mmm mmm mmm mmmm, so this is love”… Of course the charming prince made a great impression on Cinderella because he only had eyes for her even if all the girls wanted to marry him but even at the time, it seemed that love was much more than that. In the seventies and eighties, the sexual revolution had already changed the way people looked at love and the pure romance lived by Cinderella disappeared from our popular culture. Knowing all this, what is love nowadays?
The new fairy tales
The princesses have changed just like women have changed and it is encouraging to see that the latest princess in Brave did not need a prince to find happiness. She just needed to be herself and to get along with her family first. She would meet her prince in time.
Princes have changed too and it is good news. No, ladies, you don’t need to find the heir to the throne or to flirt with prince Harry to find true love. Nowadays, Patrick Dempsey is enough (even if he doesn’t dance and really doesn’t sing!). After all, he is a good man and he knows that it is wiser to get to know each other well before living together and introducing our children to someone new.
And in real life?
It doesn't take much time on the Internet or on apps like Tinder before we realize that making love is much easier to come across than true love. Is love completely out-dated? Would it mean that the poor romantics who are looking for love are dreaming the impossible dream? Probably not, but the fact that it is hard to find, combined with the overdose of a cheap kind of love used in advertising, is not helping. At the end of the day, love is only supposed to make us happy.
You can ask your friends who have found love what they think. For most of them, love is not a matter of paying bills or finding someone close enough to what they want in order to “adjust” them over time. Love makes you feel funny, sigh all day and feel stronger. It doesn’t happen every week. Finding it is somewhat related to luck but it is also only possible if you are true to yourself and know what you really want from life.
“But love from love, toward school with heavy looks” - Romeo
One thing that we hear often about love is that it fades away. Of course, at the beginning of a relationship, we want to know everything about that person. We want to hear their music taste, their favourite foods, know their interests, meet their family and find out about their plans and dreams. After a while, we seem to know everything and it is hard to be as interested as before. Yet, this person learns new things too and if couples end up splitting up, arguing that they are now living with a stranger, maybe it is because they just stopped paying attention to each other somewhere down the line.
Love requires to never take a person for granted and if Romeo had not died with Juliet, he would have had to learn not only to love loving but also to love Juliet for everything that she was or she would have been replaced, just like Rosaline was forgotten.
And me? Do you love me?
Yes, we love our children more than life itself. That’s love too. It is even the purest love there is. The love of our family and friends represents a lot of the love we will give and receive in our lives too. It is important to remember them and take care of the love that we hold for them.
There are several answers to the question “What is love?” but to notice it and find your own true love, you must be honest and true and appreciate the little things that you already have.
