What a Waste of Rationalisation

there was once a man and woman, who met each other and sparks flew, they congealed into one emotional being and lived happily ever after, never looking back (or elsewhere).

fast forward to our age, that's so outright laughable, a facetious, incredulous situation that even fairy tales find hard to accommodate.

i've finished reading Lionel Shriver's "We Need To Talk About Kevin" and realised why it deserved its Booker Prize a few years back. its treatment of love, parent-child especially and relationships packs so much emotional intensity and perceptive clarity that it's no mere mortal feat to reduce these difficult matters into words and language which often fail us when we need them most. it was almost ironic because i thought that because what she could do so well with words, using it to connect her readers to this topsy-turvy world of negative parenting, perceived or otherwise, it was the very thing that doomed the relationship between Eva and her demonic son (eponymous to title). and love is a duty, no matter how quixotic one sees it and with it comes a whole package of responsibilities and necessary executions that set in once love takes its place. it's never easy but absolutely necessary. in the end, Kevin is changed by Eva's love no matter how he rejects it because by the very act of him consciously rejecting it, he is gaining knowledge of this power and this matters.

but how love becomes the eventual goal is an easy process, contrary to what many think. and no matter how much one rationalises, if one cannot get past a feeling so immense, the feeling will override all reason and rhyme. and the more one employs his arsenal of defence mechanisms, the more claustrophobic he becomes as his ability to feel becomes an increasingly larger trap and he may just miss the very thing that validates his existence as a feeling human being. i've done my fair share of over-analysis but have convinced others to do the opposite, just fall and follow your heart. experience tells us not to trust our heart too easily but life will teach us that our heart is often the most trustworthy ministry where interpretation of feelings are concerned.

i wish i could fall just like that as well, but to fall alone, often means that the injury will be the deepest and most protracted.