OPINION PIECE: TRUE LOVE AND LOSING YOURSELF

WHAT, AN OPINION PIECE???

Now, I will be honest: I never liked opinion pieces. In my list of favorite things, they probably rank in between dental surgery and singing chipmunks. I’m just not a very..expressive person, when it comes to things I feel.

Even back in the days of school composition exams, I rarely took the opinion pieces..heh, I preferred the descriptive or creative pieces. I mean, honestly: ‘The worst day of my life’ is so much more fun than ‘Envy versus sloth: which is the greater sin?’ or ‘A tyranny by kittens is worse than a democracy by wolves. Discuss.’

(Come to think about it, that last title has potential..)

And if there’s anything worse than an opinion piece, it had to be an opinion piece about LOVE. My least favorite four-letter word. Gah! The yeti in the frozen depths of my heart would like to have a word with you..

Give me fiction anyday, when I can explore various points of views through made-up characters who often have far more interesting thoughts than me. But in the spirit of the writing project, I shall write an opinion piece, after all, haven’t done it in ages:

TEGENCE PONDERS: DOES TRUE LOVE MEAN HAVING TO LOSE YOURSELF?

(and plots Disney Princess Fan Fiction at the same time)

No, I do not agree that true love means having to lose yourself. Yes, I can understand wanting to make a change for the sake of a relationship: you do want to be the best person for the person you love after all. But a line needs to be drawn, a balance needs to be struck.

The only changes that one should make are those that which if ignored, would destroy the relationship. The big bad habits. Like womanizing, or really massive sloppiness, or beheading nuns and putting their habits on mantelpieces as trophies. You get what I mean. And I hardly feel these habits constitute major parts of one’s personality: they do not make ‘you’, and therefore should be cast aside as soon as possible.

Because love, especially ‘true’ love, I always feel, is about understanding and acceptance. It is about getting to know a person, inside and out, and accepting them, flaws and all. Take me as I am, warts and scabs and third nipples and all. No one is perfect: it is our little flaws, our differences, that shape who we are, and we should see the beauty in those little things instead of striving to get rid of them.

To change yourself might also mean losing the person the person fell in love with in the first place. And that would be short-changing both parties.

I think the Bard said it best in the immortal Sonnet 116:

‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.’

On a side note, this topic actually made me remember a comment a friend made while we were both watching Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It’s the end of the film, after the death of the villain and the heroine’s confession of love. The titular Beast is turning back into a man, complete with trippy music and flashy visuals.

And when the transformation is done, and the Beast becomes Prince Nameless, complete with flowing blond tresses and prettyboy face, looking a lot like a less evil version of Arthas from Warcraft 3, my friend turns to me and says:

“You know, I think he was a lot more handsome as the Beast.”

Which is my point. We, along with Belle from the film, have grown to love the Beast as how he was, with his shaggy mane and fangs and tail and so forth. She had grown to accept him for how he looked, and now convenient magical intervention means all that self-discovery, all that ‘love despite physical appearances’ is wasted. Fandom Secrets put it best: ‘I feel sorry for Belle. She didn’t get the man she fell in love with.’ In some ways, I felt the change back to human might actually strain the relationship.

I actually wanted to explore this idea once: it was supposed to be a story called For Whom the Belle Tolls. (Yes. Cheesy title. Sorry.) It was supposed to examine how Belle felt, missing the old savage beast.

Also included were subplots about the other subjects of the castle adapting back to human life after being bewitched as living household objects for years, which is a part of the movie I always found fascinating. Cogsworth would have gone insane: honestly, imagine living as a clock, being forever conscious of the passage of time, registering every second after every second as it passes by, every second of the day, and then losing all of that overnight. I think the tick-tock in his head would never go away.

One day I will write that story. I did attempt it, but I somehow couldn’t properly express Belle’s frustration at Beast’s change properly. I think I do not have enough proper real life experiences to properly convey these ideas.

And references to bestiality kept inviting themselves to the PARTY! Geesh, seriously, pretty girl and big savage beast thing, right? Damnit, my stories are disturbing enough without these unfortunate implications! Sometimes I worry about myself.