the smedley log - suburban scrawl

Between passion and obligation

“What you feel only matters to you. It’s what you do to those you say you love that matters.”
- from The Last Kiss

I haven’t seen the movie from which the above quote is lifted, but the quote itself fascinates me. I’m a hopeless romantic, yet I find a refreshing bit of truth in a statement deriding the sort of blind passion that leads so many of us to ignore any sense of obligation or adult-level commitment.

Or something like that.

Anyway, I might have more to say about it later, at which point I’ll either amend this post or add an entirely new one. In the interim I’m curious if the lead-in quote sparks any thoughts from anyone reading this. Anyone?

It’s what we do that actually makes ripples and waves.

Lots of wisdom in that quote

That’s actually my favorite line from that movie. It rings very, very true.

It spurred the idea of my new poll, and the way you define real love probably has a lot to do with whether or not you’d believe in the old Beatles line.

I always have this mental picture of real love – feeling so irritated with the other person it makes your skin crawl, but having it (the love) so “autopilot” that you still pick up something you see in the shop window you know that person would die to have (and I mean that nonmaterialistically) and it’s just so ingrained in you to do it, your subconscious task doing that doesn’t intercept within a million miles the very conscious irritation. Just that simultaneous contradiction.

I always thought “I love someone so much I could take a bullet for them” is easy. “I love someone so much I am willing to figure out how to navigate around them when they get on my last nerve without fleeing” is the true love.

But I’m the f-ed up broken-home not-in-a-relationship (and have few under my belt) perspective, so my view may be f-ed up as well…

Dude, I totally need another option in your poll. That’s not fair or funny.

Ugh.

That’s kind of the point, Melissa. Define love in your own way and pick the appropriate answer.

Ellen – “I love someone so much I am willing to figure out how to navigate around them when they get on my last nerve without fleeing” is an excellent representation of love, as far as I’m concerned.

Poignant post. So true. I used your post on my blog today. Hope that’s OK…

[…] * – I had started this meditation a couple weeks back when posting a quick thought on a movie quotation. I also followed this line of reasoning (quite possibly in better fashion) much earlier than that. […]