Love, When Every Man is an Island

I’ve become a crier in my adult life. I blame my grandmother who is also responsible for my pre-mature greying. She’s gotten into the habit of crying every time we say goodbye. And every time we laugh too hard, which is often when we’re together. She’s a joyous woman. Anyway, I’ve embraced it, being a crier. Certain commercials will get me, lines in reality tv shows, trailers to movies...things that aren’t supposed to elicit a deep emotional connection, those things can sneak up on me like a crushing tsunami. One minute the waters are calm, typical--it’s a hotel commercial--then, bang, my throat closes, my tears rim, my heart clutches in my chest. These tsunamis of emotion grip me and all I can do is try not to give in. Holding my breath, I force the emotions into a tiny box and place the tiny box on a small shelf deep inside me. I both cherish and reject emotion. I think if I looked in my heart, I’d find row upon row upon row of tiny shelved boxes, where government secrets go to die. Obviously, one of the bulbs on row 138 flickers a bit, but no one’s there to notice. I don’t notice. I’ve become an adept emotional evader, which has served me well in a world of an undisciplined, dare I say, immoral reign of emotion.

If you think immoral is too strong a word, watch Love Island. Yes, I sunk that low over Christmas break; I can blame my fascination with British colloquialisms. I like learning that I could insult someone by calling them a donut or a lunch box (thanks, TOWIE) or compliment them by calling them a sot (apparently there’s an r in there, but I don’t hear it). The most remarkable part of this show is the twisted reliance on Romantic ideology: you’ve just got to go with your heart. So long as you say that, you will be excused for almost any act of betrayal. Saying “I love you” this week is true because I feel it, in my heart, and you have to trust your heart. However, when next week comes and I no longer feel it, I still have to go with my heart, so...see ya. Interestingly enough, the line for such betrayal on Love Island is not “I’ve had a change of heart,” but that “My head’s been turned.”

Let’s skip discussing the obvious grammatical evasion of responsibility through passive voice; “it’s not that I had any control,” the grammar screams, “something outside my control did the turning.” Let’s skip that and jump to the fact that it’s the head’s fault. One’s head, one’s mind, one’s seat of cognition is what got turned. Not the heart. The heart remains pure, true, good. The heart cannot be associated with such base behavior. So, it’s the head. The head’s been turned. Damn one’s rationality. If only I was only heart, it’d still love you, but my head--my foolish head--it’s turned and I must go where the eye has wandered.

Shockingly enough, this repeated moment of inconstancy on Love Island did not bring me to tears, but it did move me. How much of your heart can you trust? Being a dyed-in-the-wool (who made that phrase and what does it really even mean) Romantic, I would always say Trust Thyself. That iron string will tell you what resonates as truth, as pure, as good. You have to trust yourself, your heart especially. Not just in matters of romance, but in discerning character and in making career choices. No one is you and can tell you what will be best for you like you can tell you. But is trusting yourself the same as living by the impetuous whims of feeling? Because I do not trust feelings. I often don’t feel like doing right, doing my job, doing the laundry, but if I always lived by feelings, I’d run out of clothes pretty quick, not to mention lose my job for smacking the person in the staff meeting who has to elongate the already pointless meeting by voicing her idiotic concerns about a hypothetical situation that is nowhere on the horizon (yes, Kathy, that’s how we all feel about it). Somehow, we’ve confused feelings and intuition. They aren’t the same. And you can’t treat them as if they were...otherwise you end up with Love Island (or middle school romance). You end up choosing the wrong person to commit to, or end up breaking commitments that were good for you, or worse, you end up on a tv show trying to find love and money in the span of a few weeks and basing one’s entire future on how good someone looks in a bikini. That bikini can make you feel lots of things, but I doubt you can feel whether it makes her a caring, generous, thoughtful partner. Well, then again...