Modern Romanticism

Some argue that we can find use in love. Although, there’s utility acknowledged in love only through the basis of what’s received, not in what’s given. Social bonding creates complex societies. Evolution requires an environment, like an intricate society, to increase adaptation’s pace. One advancement follows through to the next, and the theme of “expectation” is brought to a greater height of importance over “efficiency”. We expect better, we hope for better, while the lack of logic or rationality could be a human society’s downfall.

Progress, being linear, does its best to not look backwards. Love, on the other hand, is looking forward and backwards at the same time. Human beings love loved ones who are alive and able to progress their personal lives, while we, acting on our love, can bolster their life through support of the emotional or physical kind. While we love those who are alive, we also love those who are dead. A father, by being specific, is looking at his daughter, terminally ill as she is, and his love is caught in the center between life and death.

He’s seated himself down in a chair that’s centered between the two furthest ends of the kitchen table, after having turned it in the direction of where his daughter lays. At this spot, he’s eyeing her; one glimpse of his posture by how rigid and stiff his limbs are, and with almost no blinks from his eyelids to be observed, is enough to make it clear that he’s not moved for a handful of minutes.

At a distance, he’s watching, and also admiring her much like how a viewer to a painting has only their vision to survey the wide palette of colors that were used.

There’s his observant stare, there’s her, where with both idle figures mere feet apart, there’s what’s appreciated. Any remaining days he’ll look forward to, just as any that are remembered he’ll peek behind to recall. Through remembrance, he’ll appreciate what seconds, to hours, to days that’ll glide by until there’s a trill sound of an alarm clock to signal his daughter on her final departure, delivered onto death’s doorstep. After the reaper has replaced him to be crowned as her primary caregiver, all he’ll be left with is a well of bubbling memories. To appreciate them will come with joy, with panic, with distress, with grief he wants to flick a switch to turn off.

Memories will be all he has of her, the same as it will be for others who knew her. Faces like his will count innumerable footsteps that seemingly retreat from the current day of wider awareness; he walked them, like others did, willfully entangling his mind and body in a personal web of history.