I was thinking about the odd oxymoron of love today, as I cleaned my room and listened to a particularly interesting podcast that awakened my thoughts to Greek mythology. I don't know where this mindset comes from, my first instinct is to blame it on our Western mentality -simply from ignorance to whether it has been present in the past. Wherever it's origin, the social concept of heroism in love is so fascinatingly frustrating.
The scenario is so often the same, a fair maiden, a damsel of some serious distress, and a man who decides she is worth the effort to attempt to claim her for his own. He decides to pursue her, though his chances are slim, the world telling him to turn back, that she is too far out of his league, and that their relationship would never work out, and this situation yields four types of men:
1. The Fainters: ones who listen to reason and decide that she is not worth it. After all, why throw your life away chasing something that may not pay out in the end? Why risk being made a fool of? Aren't there plenty of other easier women in the world? Yet, the crowd gives a grunt of disgust at this gentlemen who so logically made his choice, and seems very displeased that he should give up so easily though odds were against him.
2. The Waiters: Men and knights of old who decide to bide their time in fair maiden's presence without opting to make any advances in making their passions or intentions known and wait for their odds in the role of a dice to improve. While neither lauded nor scorned by the crowd, spectators lean forward in expectation for rising developments since no protagonist can stay in this position for long before falling into one of the two next categories:
3. The Fool: A knight errant who sees fair lady, rushes to the highest tower, throws himself before his object of passion and eloquently begins to make his appeal only to be denied by a cold lover. Because he clings to the hope in his heart that things may change, she may have hidden feelings, or that he simply did not try hard enough the first time, our character sets out once again to prove how worthy he is of his fair lady's hand, scaling tower, crossing hill and dale, and dauntless pursues her only to find out her heart is with another.
4. The Hero: A gallant and noble man seeming no different than the Fool in his endeavors to procure his fair maiden. Both scale the same tower, cross the same hill and dale, and make the same pleas of earnest and abiding passion. However, whether fate and the stars were on his side, his delivery of passion was better, or maybe he just had a better physique?, he procures the lovely damsel's hand and rides off with her across his saddle bow into the sunset, where we naturally assume that they will live happily ever after. The audience then departs the pretty picture with the warm feeling that all is right with the world and that true love has won out in the end.
But how is this true love? How is this fair? The hero and the fool are the same in all their feats and endeavors. Both risked being made a fool of after failing, wasting time, effort, and energy on some maiden that may not even be as worthwhile as either of them thought, and both felt just as genuinely about the girl. In truth BOTH are fools, for why did they pick the girl in the tallest tower when there are plenty of hardworking and pretty milk maids to be had in any village a stone's throw away? Is this danger of losing so enchanting? Is it that we as society have trained our hearts to desire that which we cannot have or that is difficult to come by?
We have romanticized love (odd as that may sound) to the point that if it is not forbidden or secret or hard to come by, it is not worth our time or desires. Slake your lust on those easy to be had, but save all those romantic feelings for one that may not exist and will probably never be. We are in a quandary in our Western mindset of what true romance is, and - just as importantly - what true heroism is. Heros aren't made in the flashy fanfare of one who just happened to get lucky by doing something daring and risky and it by "fate" happened to work out. Heros are those who live the quiet life of love in hard times, stability in pain, and caring in the face of heartache or boredom, not some match that shines brightly to enchant a lover only to flicker out as soon as it has begun.
What is my point? What is my qualm? What is my remedy for this mess? I honestly don't know but earnestly question the realities around me in which I see. God is love, and in Him we know what true, real love is. But how does it look in the lives of love in His people? Is it godly to look for romantic or heroic love in the way we glorify in the realms of Westernism today? I don't think so, but I am still waiting to find out - if it is not a hero that is to come to sweep me off my feet, who then am I waiting for?
