LOVE, actually

While reading romance novels may not be good for the soul of a single, lonely woman, they had the oddest effect on me: they made me realize that there are 3 things I want to be able to say to that perfect knight that I’m sure will ride into my life on his white stallion (feel free to laugh it out right now, for what I say next is quite serious) - 'I love you. I trust you. I support you. Not necessarily in that order :)'. I need this 3 simple things in order to be happy with my relationship. In truth, I need to relate to almost anybody on those presumptions - my family, my friends, my colleagues, my neighbors, the girl who bags the groceries at my supermarket.

For love is not only romantic love, but also the care towards our parents, siblings and extended family, the strong bond of a true friendship, the respect and care for those who work with you and can receive and provide help.

Trust - this should probably go unexplained, but what the heck - is also the trust you implicitly give to all the other drivers when you start your car in the morning, the trust you put into the cook at your favorite restaurant that they will deliver a good and healthy meal or into the officer checking your backpack when boarding a plane that they will keep you safe.

Support - this may prove to be a tricky one, but my way of extrapolating it is, that, apart from trusting the people around you with their respective responsibilities, you should also encourage (thus prooving your support) them when they do a good job. [I am a carrot type of person (clue: motivational theories in plain words), and I find it difficult to strongly reprimand someone, even when they systematically butcher a perfectly simple task. I prefer the talk-it-over approach, give them the tools to unmake their mistakes and they will, hopefully, eventually succeed.]

So, you see, my whole world can be reduced to those 3 little words - love, trust & support.

Since my horoscope told me this is the year to simplify, I see this epiphany as the first step towards that :D

Oh, and in a more down to earth note - since we are in between the two LOVE holidays of the year (I’m counting the Dragobete, for those who prefer it), I had the opportunity to skip through or out-right ignore a lot of articles published about Valentine Day gifts this past week. Not one of them - and trust me, there were all over the world wide web - mentioned what I truly wanted on February the 14th - a wee push when my car got stuck in the snow!

Late night philosophy

I’ve just recently seen Funny People. For the second time. Circumstances aside, the movie was actually quite good, so I didn’t mind a repeat. Maybe not the best there is out there, and, mind you, the language is not exactly fit for All Viewers, but the way it’s written and played, well, it has a sort of decency to it. No exaggerated turn of events, no miraculous solutions (well, except for the whole cancer curing thing, which is actually possible, in a low percentage of cases), just regular, believable life: friends abusing each other, helping each other, living together yet having fundamentally different lives.

However, writing a review was not my reason for starting this post, but rather a more philosophical issue triggered by it. There was something in one scene that stuck with me, even from the first time I’ve seen it. It’s from one of the stand-up pieces the main character (if we consider George Simmons the main character, though in my opinion the story revolves as much around him as it does around Ira Wright): it’s about the things that stir passionate opinions in people, and their evolution with age.

While the stand-up bit is flooded by the acronym for fornication under consent of the King, the core of his words made me think of how much of the fire we have in us in our young years is kept lit in our older ones. Sandler bluntly paints the outrage that people feel in their 20s towards their immediate environment – family and friends –, anger that gets rerouted towards public institutions in their 30s, only to apparently die out completely in their 40s and be replaced by some sort of wallowing in one’s comfort zone. This picture linked instantly in my mind with another piece of script that I heard play out in two different other occasions: another stand-up comedian’s performance and a line in a funny TV series. It seems everybody is in agreement that the older you get, the more you stick to things you know, and things like learning and adventure don’t matter that much, or, even more drastically, are really just shunned.

I sure hope this is not true, at least for me and the people closest to me. I would like us to keep 'young' at mind until the very last breath we take. I would like to always cross things off and write new things on my Bucket list, and never grow tired of doing that.

Don’t you?