"To The World"
Jace
In English we're going over love and loss so of course we're going over Shakespeare's multitude of tragedies. Currently we're reading "Othello". It's a lesser known tragedy but Shakespearian all the same, but I digress for I am running on a tangent. At this very moment I'm attempting to write a paper about love. Yes, Jace Herondale is cruelly being forced to construct a paper on love of all things. It just doesn't compute in my mind but here I am all the same. I guess anything can happen after all.
A Pessimist's View on Love
There are many sides to love. There's the fairy tale nonsense that some blindly spend their lives dreaming of and then there's the real thing which consists of hard work. One must take responsibility to not only their feelings, wants and needs but also to the feelings, wants and needs of another. That's not an easy task. With every relationship there's work put in so a fairytale look on love is not accurate in the least.
"To love is to destroy and to be loved is to be the one destroyed." This is something my father would say this mantra on numerous occasions throughout my childhood. It means that if someone loves someone else then they destroy them and if that person loves them back then they are destroyed by that person. For example, in Shakespeare's tragedy "Othello", Othello loved Desdemona and Desdemona loved him. When Othello thought that Desdemona was cheating on him, that destroyed him because he had previously been under the impression that she loved him. When that thought was shattered in his mind, his heart was as well. He still loved her though and decided that her sin (her cheating on him) would be what ruined her in the end so he had to prevent her from sinning anymore. So he decided to kill her. (Clearly his good judgement was destroyed as well as his heart.) Regrettably, Othello found out the truth moments after he killed the woman he loved. It turned out that his most trusted advisor, Iago had deceived him. Othello was so upset that he ended his own life. Othello loved Desdemona and then he destroyed her. Othello was loved by Desdemona and he too was destroyed. In this instance love appears to be more of a tragic event than a desirable one.
Of course, in an ideal world, love wouldn't work that way. People would have the ability to love and be loved without such dire consequences. If someone loved someone else then they wouldn't have to keep it a secret, they wouldn't have to pretend it wasn't true. They could scream it on the rooftops, they could scream it to the world. When one fell in love, it would be seen as a blessing rather than a curse. Life and love would work together in a way they currently don't. There would be assured safety with love all around in a utopian kind of world.
Maybe there is something positive about love. Perhaps this author just lacks sight of it. There must be something about love that forces people to spend their lives search for it. Either that or the world is filled with fools. This author is open to believing either theory. Still, with all the positive love songs there are and the surplus of cheesy romantic films and novels, there must be something appealing about love. Why else would the media exploit it so much?
Some make it to the final step in love, "in sickness and in health, til death do us part", or something to that effect. That's the ultimate goal in love, is it not? Marriage. That is such a controversial thing. Is it better to stay with someone one's whole life or is it better to never tie oneself down to one person? What if one is miserable with that one person who was supposed to be their everything? What then? Divorce, that's what. Supposedly, fifty percent of all marriage ends in divorce. After some research, this author can state that that particular statistic is wrong, it's less than fifty percent. However, this author also feels the need to point out that there has been a decrease in both marriage and divorce in recent years. That's because people are less willing to take that major jump, to risk losing that person forever. They don't think they can do it. Maybe that's the biggest tragedy. Our society isn't really getting a decrease in new divorces because there's such a significant drop in the amount of new marriages. It just seems a pity that fewer people are giving love a chance.
Personally, this author feels that love does destroy people. However, if this author were to find someone who could provide conclusive evidence that could prove otherwise, then he would scream his love for that girl to the world.
I read over my paper and print it out for next Thursday even though it's only Monday. Yes, Jace Herondale does his assignments early; so what?
There are many things I often wish I could tell the world. I would start by telling everyone to get off my back and let me be who I want to be. Not who they want me to be. It's my life. Not theirs. Then I would tell the world that I want to help people, that I'm not just the snide, cocky asshole they all think I am. That all that's just an act and there's actually a good person hiden under the shallow shell they all see and generally accept. The world would know exactly how I feel about it's immense supply of corruption, greed, and violence, and it's tendency to make the same mistakes over and over again. The world would know that I think it's pretty screwed up that I'm so popular when I stomp all over people when there are people who actually act like they care about others who are way less popular. I'm an awful person but I'm glorified and foolishly sought after. How can we live in a world that's so backward that behavior like that is acceptable? That is a load of crap. That's what I would tell the world.
I'm just not sure the world is ready for all that. Yet.
