2014 Documentary Film: The Age Of Love By Steven Loring

Especially within a society such as ours, which distorts love into lust, the ability to recognize and display the gift of love is essential. Selfish love, which is so inherent to humanity, inhibits God from acting in our lives, blinding us from experiencing His presence and eternal joy. It is so easy to look for pleasure and love in self satisfaction. However, the path to lasting happiness is not found through instant gratifications, but in the grueling practice of living a life full of

“Discovering Love” is an article about the definition of love and the different aspects, such as how it works and where you get it. Developmental psychologist Harry Harlow is the main contributor to this study. Harlow was particularly interested in how early life experiences, specifically interaction with one’s mother or primary caregiver, impact an individual’s ability to love and be loved by others later in life.

Ever since the beginning of time, love has played an enormous role among humans. Everyone feels a need to love and to be loved. Some attempt to fill this yearning with activities and possessions that will not satisfy – with activities in which they should not participate and possessions they should not own. In Andrew Marvell’s poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” the speaker encounters an emotion some would call love but fits better under the designation of lust for a woman. In contrast, the speaker of Robert Herrick’s poem, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” urges virgins to marry, to make a lasting commitment in which love plays a

In the movie Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz, two different kinds of love are exposed. The love relationship between Ilsa Lund and Rick is a more passionate relationship while the one between Ilsa and Victor Laszlo is more intimate. Love is composed of different feelings and because of that it can be expressed, as seen in Casablanca, in different ways. “The Intimate Relationship Mind”, a text by Garth J. O. Fletcher and Megan Stenswick, helps support that claim providing a scientific background on how love is shaped by those different feelings. It says that “love is composed of three distinct and basic components that each represent evolved adaptations; namely, intimacy, commitment,

In this global era of evolving civilization, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the fascinating fact about love. Love is a feeling of intimacy, warmth, and attachment. Love is inevitable and it plays a vital role in human life as Janie uses her experience with the pear tree to compare each of her relationships, but it is not until Tea Cake that she finds “a bee to her bloom.” (106).

Moreover, this relationship forms to satisfy the couple’s shared desire and to nullify the “threat of ultimate dreariness [which] seems to hang over even the happiest moments” (896).

Love should be born and live in fields, just like wild flowers. Love needs to be nurtured by water, with no concern about where and when the next rainfall will take place. Love needs to allow nature to take its course and trust in the sustenance that its surrounding provides. However, love refuses to take the easy path. Instead, love decides to live in kitchens alongside irritated cooks, dirty walls and screaming infants with impatient mothers. Clearly, love would be better off without concerns, growing in a field like an iris, patiently waiting for the next rainfall. However, love chooses to exist in chaotic environments filled with discontent and discord.

Whether it be due the malleable minds of children, or the turbulent world around them, dramatic changes in life are an absolute certainty. Young, naïve children are highly impressionable. Their parents teach them one thing, their friends another, and society, yet something else. Fickle, they morph in and out of the plethora of ideologies and mindsets laid out in front of them. This leads to a disorienting and rather confusing child-to-young-adult life, one without a clear sense of morality. The lack of focus upon what is right and wrong, inherently subjective terms, continues into our early adult hood and, for better or worse, seemingly defines the child for the rest of his or her life. This universal theme has been explored for many years through films aptly called “coming-of-age” stories, recently, and perhaps most effectively in Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom (2012). This film revolves around Sam and Suzy, two recently pubescent kids, their romantic affair, and their effects on the world around them. The film not only captures the youthful dynamic between the two protagonists, but explores the “coming-of-age” theme through Anderson’s signature flat perspective and through the actors’ portrayals of these characters.

While people are often able to identify when they feel the emotion love, love itself seems to defy definition.  In her polemic “Against Love”, Laura Kipnis argues that love cannot exist as traditional expressions of love such as marriage, monogamy, and mutuality.  However, in her argument, she defines love incorrectly by equating love to expressions of love. This definition lacks a component essential to understanding the abstract concept of love: emotion. Recognizing love as emotion helps us realize that, contrary to Kipnis’ argument love by nature transcends all expressions of love. Love is subjective and exists in any and all forms. In her argument that love cannot survive as conventional expressions of love, Kipnis ignores the nature of love as emotion in favor of equating love to different expressions of love. Love is a force which exists above expressions of love; a true understanding of love can only come from an assessment of how individuals, not societies, respond to the emotion.

Sharon Olds’ poem “Sex Without Love” wonders at the ability for two people to have sex and not involve emotions or pretenses of love. The poem argues that it is better to have sex without love under the premise that love is a false savior for people, and everyone is all alone anyhow. In other words, the claim is that personal interactions do not serve a purpose other than being a distraction, and they will inevitably end. However, the notion that attachment and love are false hopes for people and each person is all alone does not account for the inevitability of human interactions and the underlying importance of relationships. While the poem does not give its definition of being alone, complete isolation is virtually impossible and leads

The movie When A Man Loves A Woman depicts the journey of Alice, a mom, wife, and alcoholic as she comes to term with her disease, and seeks treatment. At the beginning of the movie, it is not easy to tell that Alice does in fact struggle with alcohol addiction. She is a lively and energetic lady that has a large sense of humor that seems to be equally shared with her husband, Michael. As the movie progresses, it shows the fear and worry that her oldest daughter, Jess, has about her mother and her disease. Morning after morning, Alice wakes up and fights a hangover, only to come home and find any reason to drink again.

     In contrast to these fairly pessimistic views on love, the author describes an instance in which a couple found true love. Mel tells an anecdote of an old couple that was admitted to the emergency room after a very bad car accident. The two people were wrapped up in full body casts, and as a result they could not see each other. Mel noticed that the old man was very sad, even

Happiness usually is derived from feelings of independence, competence, self-esteem, or relating well to other people (Sheldon et al., 2001). One aspect of adulthood that still remains the same, despite generational changes, is the development and maintenance of relationships. Erik Erikson spoke of young adulthood as the “Intimacy-Versus-Isolation Stage.” During this period, the focus is on developing close, intimate relationships

The human idea of love is quite possibly the most misunderstood in today’s society. Love can be between a man and woman, mother/father and their kids, or even really good friends. However, these relationships of love go through many interactions and stages to start and progress. Many psychological events must occur and be worked through in order to be successful. All relationships must endure the five perspectives of human behavior. These perspectives are biological, learning, social and cultural, cognitive, and psychodynamic influences.

In the Baumeister article, he talks about the shift from the meaning of life being articulated as trying to fulfill your higher need and go to heaven to the meaning of life being articulated as love and success. Love, as discussed, mentioned is only seen as important to the meaning of life if it involves a passionate relationship. In many novels, it does seemingly portray the chase, when marriage is given it is when problems arise and the movie always ends in either a new passionate relationship or the marriage finding its passion again through a series of events, such as “I think I love my wife”. We see love as a meaning of life portrayed in our own personal lives as well, not just in fictitious media. Last year I was discussing with my roommate