Today, literature hates me.

There were times, back in ages past, when love was cherished as the ideal to which all of the arranged marriages or affairs with courtesans or corruptions of the established Order Of Things was supposed to be in aid of. Whether or not realization of that was as tolerated in real life as in the literature (the writing reflecting the times or the times following the ‘marketing’ of the ideas displayed in the writing – it doesn’t really matter for the moment), it still displays what people held up as a dream of something better, or something that at least could have made their lives meaningful.

“What a strange world it is where you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo. I’m talking about the real thing, the grand passion, which may not allow affection or convenience or happiness. The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if you heart is built like the Titantic you go down. That’s the size of it, the immensity of it. It’s not proper, it’s not clean, it’s not containable.”
- The Power Book, by Jeanette Winterson

This passage, when I read it, hit me with the difference between ages past and now so profoundly. Now, the goal or ideal which interrupts the established Order Of Things isn’t perfect, romantic love. Isn’t love against all odds. It’s sex. Pure and primal. The refrain of ‘if you cheat on me, I’ll kill you, but if you ever had a chance to get with__(insert hot movie star here)___, I’d completely understand’ I’ve heard so frighteningly often. Not ‘if you left me for someone that you really loved, someone that made what we had seem pale in comparison, I’d understand. I couldn’t see you again, but to leave me for True Love would be forgiveable and I would move on’, as we might have seen in ages past.

Instead, today we see the hero gets the hot chick he just met, and the sidekicks die not to save the city that their true love resides in, but 'to keep their word' to the hero, or for revenge, or whatever. For the most part, love has been pushed into sappy, unrealistic 'chick flicks' for people looking to escape the cold indifference of the relationships in their lives.

I am by far –not- the romantic, in any company I’ve known or kept. Far from it. And yet, the shift in society’s dream leaves me inexpressibly sad. Can’t imagine why.