Grand Valley State University
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Posted on
Aug 25, 2009 at 8:04pm by
johnamy
It is engrained into our heads from the day we watch Walt Disney’s “Cinderella”, that a person cannot be happy without their true love. It has become custom for generations that we must find our soul mate, get married, and this should be done before we get too old. Once a person starts reaching their late thirties, it is like they have waited last minute to write an essay. As a result, they have to rush through to get things done, and in the end, it really is not what they were hoping for. In today’s society, it is all about finding love and getting married to the first person that seems to fit the profile, regardless of whether or not they are really the right person. Society, too quickly, labels the right person for us, whom is ordinarily of the same race, religion, class, and around the same age, but who is to say that a 40 year old, homeless, African American man is not the right person for my 19 year old, middle class, Caucasian self? Society claims this to be wrong, so I am a bit forced to marry within guidelines. As it is, arranged marriages are claimed to be no longer upheld by the majority of the world, but truthfully, social rule continues to be as precise about mate selection as parents once were in the past. I do not know much about true love, but I am almost certain that I will never find it. With over six billion people in the world, it is close to impossible to assume that I will come across my soul mate in my short existence. It takes years to get to know someone before you truly know if they have your heart, and so, instead, I will conform to society, and take the first socially acceptable man that comes my way, and claim him as my own. But why do we restrict ourselves to substandard people? Are we so greedy that we will stop a person that we do not even truly love, from finding that true love because we want to be married with a family before society looks down on us?
Who is to even say that everyone has a soul mate out there? Truth be told, true love didn't even become a known term until the seventeenth century. Finding a soul mate is actually just an undying trend that became fashionable in the 1600s. I have no doubt in love; I love my family and I love my friends. I also have no doubt in romantic love, but true love is a phrase I find hard to grasp. True love should include all forms of love, but the romantic part always seems to fade away. This may be claimed to be the normal cycle, but this is exactly what drives husbands and wives to cheat on their spouses because they are no longer satisfied. In the end, the feeling of being in love fades to the feeling of pain and resent.
True love is not supposed to hurt. True love is supposed to put butterflies in your stomach whenever you see that person, make you smile whenever that person’s name is brought up in a conversation, and make you always want to be by that person’s side, but love is not supposed to bring you pain. At least, that is how society says love is supposed to feel, but no one really feels that happiness everyday throughout 50 years of a long term relationship.
To rekindle the burning love that seems to dim down after time, therapy, interventions, and aids are presented to a relationship. People work and work to make love real, but such labor can cause an abundant amount of built up irritation, and this is where the hurt comes in. Soon, a married person is committing adultery, or, at the greatest lengths, murder (it's bound to happen to some of us). There is, however, for the few that luck out on these ghastly outcomes, divorce, which seems to be a common consequence taking over the love industry. Although, while such extremes are being taken to escape love, the aspiration to find true love will never fade away. Love is what people live for.
In the end, however, no one lives Cinderella’s fairytale. Cinderella was a dirty and poor young girl, living in unfortunate circumstances, but she eventually married royalty and lived happily ever after. It all seems so wonderful that everyone wants their life to end like that, but no one pays attention to the details. Cinderella had a fairy God mother who used magic to give her everything she ever wanted, but unfortunately in the real world, much like true love, magic is just an illusion. Chances are, you will find the person that seems to be everything you ever dreamed of, but do not let love fool you. Unless you are one of the few fortunate, when you least expect it, true love will hit you blind side, right onto the floor, and you will be willing to do anything to get out.
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