Have you stopped writing? I asked this question from myself. Did I just loose a little talent that I have. In the past I used to always tell myself if only I had the time, I would write this and that and what not. And now when I actually have time, I haven’t written anything, how ironic it is and then I go on to blame my surrounding that nothing inspires me anymore. Inspiration that used to struck me out of nowhere and forced me to bleed on the paper has just disappeared. No matter what I read, no matter how many walks I take, no matter what kind of media I consume. At its best the inspiration will appear like bubble and quickly burst under the routine/boredom of grown-up life. Let’s do laundry first, prepare healthy meal first, count the steps first, stretch first, file tax first, take care of doctor’s appointment first, immigration document first, listen to your supervisor first, investment first, crypto first, news first. In amidst all that first, the bubble which does appear from time to time burst quicker than I could even feel its existence.
And then I looked at the other angle. What was the subject that I used to frequently write about, Love? I guess one doesn’t need inspiration to write about love. All you have to do is pay attention to your surroundings, human response and put them into the words. And if want to write poetry then just sew the same words in the thread of wind chime and let it produce its magical sound. If it is easy to write about love, then why I haven’t written yet? I did, I did a lot but didn’t publish any of it because suddenly all of it didn’t make sense to me. Writing about romanticized love is easy but writing about love in social construct is all together a different thing.
It is easy to immerse yourself in bubble thought of nice and shiny things, feel good events, watching sunset together, dancing in the rain together and what not. The list will go as long, as you would want to make. The romanticization of love is an escapism. And we need that because real life is hard and full of unfair events. But where do we draw a boundary between a feel-good illusion to take real life decision based on that illusion. The more I read about philosophers such as Alain de botton, psychotherapist Esther perel and many more studies published in various credible journals. The more I realize that what we think about the love is the time period and the culture we are born in. It feels like as if we are never going to truly understand how to move forward with the love. In the past, two people came together for convenience and by the time we reached to 19th century, in the west the same concept was frowned up. It was like pendulum has swing to other direction and convenience was thrown out of the window and replaced by romanticizing and how two people feel about each other. It was either convenience or feelings, either side of pendulum. Did that movement produce more happy and stable marriages? We don’t know exactly because how much divorce was accepted in the society also plays important role. Did it increase the marital satisfaction, yes but for short amount of time. Do keep it in mind that I am only mentioning here west culture because it is easier to find studies on their time period and the change is quite evident which makes it easier to study and draw a conclusion from that. Going back to discussion, convenience and romanticization alone didn’t make much of progress in terms of overall satisfaction. Fast forwarding to 21st century where west began to implement both concepts. It has not perfected it yet, but we have better understanding about things now. Isn’t it the whole point of history is to understand things better? Especially don’t repeat things which has gone wrong. A clinical Psychology doctoral student named Ana has discussed many studies about stable and long lasting relationship and all of those studies involves the combination of past movements. It is so important to have financial security and both partners need to have some outlook towards money while it is equally important to respect each other and have clear stating boundaries what works for one. The more I read and explore these studies the more I think we might have found a better solution, but we are still not there yet to the level of complete formulation of that ‘this will guarantee to work.’
When I got this much understanding about Love it is hard for me to write about it from just fairytale point of view. May be one day I might publish my old written material but for now I guess I grew up and I prefer to delve in the complexity of love from social construct angle rather than ‘just’ feel good angle/or pure emotional responsive way.
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