what if i'd gone to the movies

Murukami's Norwegian Wood in the morning, (500) Days of Summer at night. In both works, majority of the plot revolves around what love isn't but both end with the promise that this time could be it. Or not, depending on how you see things I suppose. Neither one takes on the burden of exposing what love looks like, but it does a good job of what pining for it is like. Both capture something very human, no matter how seemingly painful and hopeless the process of falling in and out of love is, all of that fear can be obliterated by the possibility that this next time it's going to work. We're like rats that keep buzzing for that electric shock.

Is it all up to chance? Our dispositions and our situations in life are constantly in flux and it seems like many things need to line up before either party is ready. In the movie, the process is less defined, less systematic, like blindly shooting at a target. In the novel, the decision is made to love but with that decision comes the assiduous task of waiting for hearts and minds to heal, to die, to be born again before love can be fulfilled.

Currently, I'm more cynical and from yesterday's cross-art form immersion to love and all its demons what resonates the most is this:

Just because she likes the same bizzaro crap that you do doesn't mean she's your soulmate. Rachel Hansen, 500 Days of Summer

meditation

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

- The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

Love necessitates pain, which makes it easy to say that it's worth foregoing altogether. Put in these words, love is not even a gamble anymore, there's no hope that you'll get lucky and breeze to a blissful existence with your partner. Love will cause pain. Why do it at all? A few lines earlier the Prophet says:

if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure... then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing floor, into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Fullness of life somehow necessitates love. It is as if giving yourself over willingly to be exposed to pain is a prerequisite to all other emotions, be it joy or sorrow. There is some truth in this. In loving somebody you become privy to the way they see and feel life and as you open yourself up to that you become infected, so to speak. Your heart opens up a little to new feelings, and sources of joy and sorrow. Yet, sometimes it's tempting not to feel anything at all, that it would actually be desirable to hold back on all of one's laughter and not have to shed all of one's tears. Is it really worth it?