Just watched Two Weeks Notice...
Jun. 28th, 2003 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabid1st...a quirky little film with loads of soft charm and a pat ending. I sniffled and felt that giddy uplift of spirit that comes standard issue with romantic comedies. But then I settled down to sleep and started thinking (as I tend to do). I thought about the future of Hugh Grant's low ambition philanderer and Sandra Bullock's obsessive untouchable as they embarked on that uniquely adult journey known as "COMMITTED RELATIONSHIP." I wondered if they had a smidgen of a chance of being remotely content...
CONTENT...not HAPPY...
Happiness, is the mirage of our culture. We invest a lot of energy into pursuing it, finding it, securing it. We track across the desert of our life always believing we will someday reach this Happy State. But even when we have it...it really is a very fleeting thing. Happiness is the orgasm of existence. Contentment on the other hand is like Tantric Sex (it just goes on and on and on...if you're doing it right anyway ;-D ). Unlike happiness, contentment is a state of being which is both achievable and sustainable. Just ask the Buddha or Neo(Keanu Reeves knows everything).
The problem, I think, is that contentment is not really modeled in our society. We don't value it. And we seldom see it because we are too busy looking ahead to our next HAPPY. We want the rush. In America, our films and our television shows tend to end on the HAPPY moment...the moment when all differences are set aside for a second and true love is declared. We so seldom see love as committed contentment.
Love, we feel, is the glass slipper fitting Cinderella. It is the kiss that awakens Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. It is the maid learning she is good enough for the rich man and the rich man seeing her true worth and risking his career for her. Love is that happy moment. And when the movie ends on the kiss...the message it sends is, "THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER."
And if THEY can do it so can WE! But can we? Can they? Did they REALLY?
Is LOVE the same as being "in love." Most people prefer the latter state. They might even say "I love you but I'm not IN LOVE with you" and mean..."I don't have that heady rush of happiness when I'm with you"...or in the end stages of a relationship they might mean, "You no longer make me giddy or fill me with breathless longing."
Anyway...I have no conclusions to draw here...I just can't sleep and my beloved has a cold so I don't want to keep him awake with the tossing and turning and such. This leads to the thinking...and the live journal update.
Everyone sing "The Circle of Life" with me and then quietly disperse. :-D
But before you go...think about the last time you saw contentment modeled as an acceptable or desirable state in our culture? Okay, let's give the point to conflict in storytelling. Maybe it's just BORING to be contented...THERE'S NO STORY THERE...
But what about this: Think about the last time you saw a film or television show about a couple working to solve their problems rather than just sweeping them under the rug or going their separate ways? When is the last time you honestly felt, on reflection, that a fictional couple had a real chance to become contented committed partners for the long haul?
And not one of you better say BUFFY and SPIKE or I will be forced to say, "HA!"
CONTENT...not HAPPY...
Happiness, is the mirage of our culture. We invest a lot of energy into pursuing it, finding it, securing it. We track across the desert of our life always believing we will someday reach this Happy State. But even when we have it...it really is a very fleeting thing. Happiness is the orgasm of existence. Contentment on the other hand is like Tantric Sex (it just goes on and on and on...if you're doing it right anyway ;-D ). Unlike happiness, contentment is a state of being which is both achievable and sustainable. Just ask the Buddha or Neo(Keanu Reeves knows everything).
The problem, I think, is that contentment is not really modeled in our society. We don't value it. And we seldom see it because we are too busy looking ahead to our next HAPPY. We want the rush. In America, our films and our television shows tend to end on the HAPPY moment...the moment when all differences are set aside for a second and true love is declared. We so seldom see love as committed contentment.
Love, we feel, is the glass slipper fitting Cinderella. It is the kiss that awakens Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. It is the maid learning she is good enough for the rich man and the rich man seeing her true worth and risking his career for her. Love is that happy moment. And when the movie ends on the kiss...the message it sends is, "THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER."
And if THEY can do it so can WE! But can we? Can they? Did they REALLY?
Is LOVE the same as being "in love." Most people prefer the latter state. They might even say "I love you but I'm not IN LOVE with you" and mean..."I don't have that heady rush of happiness when I'm with you"...or in the end stages of a relationship they might mean, "You no longer make me giddy or fill me with breathless longing."
Anyway...I have no conclusions to draw here...I just can't sleep and my beloved has a cold so I don't want to keep him awake with the tossing and turning and such. This leads to the thinking...and the live journal update.
Everyone sing "The Circle of Life" with me and then quietly disperse. :-D
But before you go...think about the last time you saw contentment modeled as an acceptable or desirable state in our culture? Okay, let's give the point to conflict in storytelling. Maybe it's just BORING to be contented...THERE'S NO STORY THERE...
But what about this: Think about the last time you saw a film or television show about a couple working to solve their problems rather than just sweeping them under the rug or going their separate ways? When is the last time you honestly felt, on reflection, that a fictional couple had a real chance to become contented committed partners for the long haul?
And not one of you better say BUFFY and SPIKE or I will be forced to say, "HA!"