I love watching love stories. What can I do? I am a girl! Tonight, I saw Sense & Sensibility. I never read the book, but I've seen the film a few times. And every time I do, I sigh. And ask—is love really the only thing a girl ever thinks of?
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to sound so cynical. But we're talking about Jane Austen here, and like Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility packs everything there is about love and romance and women being married off by their parents to worthy bachelors.
I love it how the film translates Austen's experience of bliss into the living-happily-ever-after, amidst material wealth or disinheritance. I feel for every female character in the film, and just watching them makes me want to desire what they desire. Plus, of course, the etiquette surrounding the period where the story is set—it just adds to the heightening of one's emotions!
But if you really think about it, isn't that the proper way for a lady and a gentleman caller to behave—with prudence? Call me old school, but I really do not believe that propriety is outdated. Didn't scripture say that a gentle and quiet spirit is pleasing to God (1 Peter 3:4)?
Then there's one YouTube video I just saw recently. It's called Struck. There's this guy drinking coffee and about to cross the street when WHAM! He saw a pretty, tall, blonde woman walking... and then it hit him. As in a arrow hit him, spot on the chest where his heart is supposed to be. And all through 5 minutes of the film, he wears his arrow around. Until he spots her again. And so, for the next minute onwards, she helps him get the arrow out, they kiss (background music: Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwoʻole), and then this burly “Cupid” appears, looks at the kissing couple and leaves smiling (music fades out, credits roll). On to the next couple!
It is so easy for women (and men) to fall in love with love. Our heads are constantly being rammed with the idea of falling in- or being head over heels in- or falling out of—love. Makes a person want to believe that love is something dangerous, something that can severely hurt you or even kill.
But then again, we know it's not. We read from the Bible what love truly is. We see 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 everywhere—greeting cards, bookmarks, shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers and even billboards. We talk about love in prayer meetings, on Facebook and Twitter, in conferences. We hear about it from pastoral leaders, counselors, mentors. But still, single people (even me!) fall into the trap.
Why? Maybe because of physiology. Or psychology. Because it's there, deeply woven into our physical, physiological and psychological make up. The Creator and Author of life Himself programmed love into our very core. But must we fall prey to love? No, let me rephrase that—must we fall prey to the emotions that surface when we love?
That is why I love the heroine Elinor in Sense & Sensibility. The book described her this way: “She was stronger alone; and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as, with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.” She was always the level-headed one, the stronger one, the one who puts her head above her heart. Why else would she say, “Sense will always have attractions for me.”?
Today, finding love may still be the primary thing preoccupying a single person's mind. But having some sense and sensibility while searching and discerning ought to keep us from falling in, out or head over heels.
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