I have this Academic Literacy class for freshmen. It's sort of like a precursor for English 9 so that we can ensure that all students have the requisite skills for successful passage of the course. The Literacy class is kind of a farce though because we are required to teach out of a workbook that has all lessons divided up into minute by minute sections. If we deviate from the gameplan, I bet some IRRE representative will come jumping out of the sky with whips and fire to put me back in my place. These workbook projects are so incredibly boring. Even I, as the facilitator, feel for these kids because there's so much nonsense involved in the completion of the workbook lessons. But this week has been a total refresher. Some of the other instructors who are teaching the same class got their books a little late. As a result, they are a few lessons behind. We decided that it would be most prudent to get everyone on the same page starting October 1. Since I was so far ahead, I've gotten to spend this week away from the workbook and actually planning lessons how I want to! It's quite the thrill.
Today we watched The Princess Bride and were to write a movie review about it. It's certainly one of my favorite movies and it never fails to get a laugh out of me. And those sappy dramatic parts - I'm a sucker for those scenes. There's a reason I've always got tears ready to start pouring whenever I watch the beginning of Up. Anyhow, I was, once again, struck by the notion that not even death can stop true love. Is this true? I mean, if we die, shouldn't we want our true love to be happy again? But if this is true, then was that person really our true love to begin with? If the person left alive can find love again, then was the original love really true in the first place? Hard to say...
I also watched (500) Days of Summer yesterday. Here too is another concept concerning true love: when you know, you know. You can go into a situation not expecting to find love, even to the point of actively denying its existence, and then falling in love nonetheless. It seems like if it's true love, then it will find us even when we're not ready for it.
So what do we do with these two versions of love? First I'd say we file them away with all of the other versions of love out there. No one person is going to have the same outlook on what makes love real, or what constitutes a pure and unadulterated love. It's our own interpretations that drive those thoughts and feelings. So why do we spend so much time pumping up the concept? Why do we watch so many romantic movies and listen to so many love songs and read so many love poems? Are we searching for one love approach that may finally be right? Are we trying to adapt our own personal love life lessons into those of others who we may not even know? Are we trying to enhance our own? And where do we draw that line between personal constructionist and a community constructionist?
Look, there're tons of love theories out there. I'm only really bringing up this topic because I happened to watch back-to-back movies about love, and then my mind went whirring off on its own from there. Regardless of the reason, the truth, in my mind at least, still resonates. We can't be sitting around trying to fit our love concepts into the ideals of another. I think we need to be bold and confident in ourselves. If we can be honest, raw, and exposed to the outside world, then the love we idealize will eventually come to fruition, whether it be that love that doesn't end even when the earthly world does or that love that we actively try to avoid and yet become entangled with anyway.
Funny the things that get typed when you sit down to a blank blog screen...
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