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The most powerful stories typically involved relationships that had some mileage: the trials of midlife marriage, the strains of parenthood, and the loss of loved ones (children, spouses, parents, friends). These stories seldom celebrate roses and kisses, but are they love stories? Absolutely.
Vulnerability is the animating quality of all love stories, and it can take many forms. In every case, though, vulnerability means exposing ourselves to the possibility of loss, but also—crucially!—to the possibility of connection. You can’t have one without the other. The stakes vary, of course, from dipping one’s toe in the water to taking a blind dive from a high cliff.
love, at its best, is more of a wheelbarrow than a rose: gritty and messy but also durable. Yet still hard to put into words.
What makes movies magical is not that incredible things happen in them. Incredible things happen in real life. No, what makes movies magical is they end right after the incredible thing happens. They stop after the war is over, after the team wins the game, after the boy gets the girl. But in life the story keeps going and the boy can later lose the girl.
Our futile search for answers only deepened our depression, but the great thing about depression is that it’s not one size fits all, but rather comes tailor-made to suit one’s particular personality.
