Is Love Essential? The Good Life?

Ever since we were born, we were told about how we were going to live our lives and what we were going to do with it. We all go through different experiences and problems, and we all see the “good life” in different ways. Everyone’s life

What is your version of the "good life" using three aspects of life and is it the same as the person next to you? Everyone has their own idea of the "ideal life" and no two people have the same exact idea. Some may have the idea of money, clothes, and cars while another may have the idea of family, no death, and a big house. The two individuals have two completely different points of view, interests, likes, dislikes, and aspirations. My version of the "good life" is nothing like the other examples but it is okay because it is supposed to be different. Personally my "ideal life" include having enough money to sustain and be comfortable, having a successful career, and having a lifetime supply of puppies and dogs. There are reasons behind why I have chosen these specific aspects of a possible life and they will be explained in the paragraphs to follow.

Throughout our lives, many of us crave and strive to be loved and cherished. Many find purpose and happiness when they share reciprocated affection with another person. Heartbreak often occurs when what we wished for in a relationship is not returned in the same manner. Miranda in “Sexy” by Jhumpa Lahiri felt this at the end of her relationship with a married man named Dev. He had treated her unlike anyone else before. This caused her to believe their relationship meant the same to him as it did to her, despite him being married to another women. Mr. Kapasi in “Interpreter of Maladies” found affection towards a woman who was cold towards her family, but was warm and showed great interest in him. He had started to believe she was different

Because love is universally perceived, everyone can relate to the author. The reader experiences a great deal of empathy and slight distress when Nicole, as well as Teague, goes through the experience and effects of her cancer. “Love wasn’t something I felt anymore,” Teague expresses, “It was something I did,” (281). This statement authenticates that he had the truest love for her. He validates this even more so by comforting and providing for Nicole through selfless actions during her sickness whereas others would have given up if the relationship did not attribute to real love. He proved his romantic love, a once inner feeling, through deeds that were physical and clearly apparent. A similar, yet different love, was further

I believe the definition of a good life can be described in three simple words, freedom, love, and happiness. Freedom: we should be able to choose where we live, work and what we do with our lives. Love: everyone should know what it feels

Therefore, what defines a “good life” is completely subjective; so, the definition of a good life can be logically considered a variable that is undefined and

In “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall,” Ellen mentions how she wants the doctor to “Find him and tell him I forgot him...Tell him I was given back everything he took away and more” (Porter 848). She is referencing a man who she was going to marry, but who then left her to humiliate herself at the altar. He seemed to have stopped loving her, and while she was very hurt by that, it is a fact of life that heartache and rejection, or ‘jilting’, are going to happen. Romantic relationships are not the only ones that can be given up people, though. Familial relationships can be thrown away just as easily. Mama, in “Everyday Use,” ponders, “How long was it that the other house burned? Ten, twelve years?” (Walker 767), as it was shortly after that that her daughter Dee left her to go find education elsewhere. Mama helped her get the education she wanted so she could have a better life, but after Dee went through it, she seemed to completely forget about where and who she came from.

On page 178, Mel states, “…And it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we’re talking about when we talk about love.” In short, Mel is suggesting that none of the characters understand love, and those who think they do (Nick and Laura) are temporarily disillusioned. Additionally, Carver invalidates Nick and Laura’s comments on love by categorizing them as new fools in love, meaning that Nick’s comment about love being absolute is far from true. The contrast of the two couples relationships suggests that there are many forms and stages of love, which further disproves its absoluteness. In conclusion, the contrast of all four characters’ views questions both the existence and the verbal definition of true love.

Mareez Reyes once said, “One of the hardest lessons in life is letting go. We fight to hold on and we fight to let go” (Reyes). This quote shows relationship to Tim O’Brien because he struggles with letting go of situations that occurred during the war. O’Brien wants to put his hurt in the past, but the memories haunt him in his everyday life, so he writes stories in order to cope. The Vietnam war was a war that many people did not support, innocent young men were drafted to fight for their lives and country without having a choice.

I have experienced love, lost, and the slimmest of experience of realizing that you fallen and that you now have to pick yourself back up and try again. I empathize with Jim Cross from the short story “The Things They Carried” for all the emotions he goes through while living in the purgatory that is called war. From the sentence, where Jim Cross looks back at a moment where Martha and he were at the movies, ”when he touched her knee, she turned and looked at him in a sad, sober way that made him pull his hand back(P.3),” it becomes clear that the aim of the flashback was to solidify the reader’s understanding that Jim’s love is unrequited. Throughout high school I was in love with my best friend, which turned out to be unrequited also. I was in absolutely despair and heartbroken, but the love that was there, throughout all the pain it brought me, was a gift.

love doesn’t exist. This quote also helps to show how the speaker’s grief over his beloved’s

Love will end in despair is the main theme in A Farewell to Arms, but what if there is a spark of hope. What if it’s better to love then not love at all. Catherine never showed any regret about loving her fiance that died before she met Frederic. Frederic will miss Catherine but he will not regret that he ever loved her. Love can make and break a person, just because love fades does not mean it ever leaves. “ Are you in love? [asked Rinaldi]. Yes. [Frederic

Raymond Carter speaks about two different types of love in the Story What We talk About When We Talk About Love. The two types of love are spiritual and true love. Spiritual love is when you are connected with your significant half on a spiritual level. That could mean feeling like you can’t live without that person or just loving them so much that you would do anything to be with them. An example of true love is waking up every morning and making a cup of coffee not just for you but for you and your partner. However in the end True love is more dominant because people learn to love again as Raymond

Carver uses the protagonist, Mel, to aggressively drive the couples discussion, as well as to exemplify the complexity in the endeavor to define true love. Therefore, Carver makes his assertion of Mel 's superiority within the first sentence of the story. "My friend Mel McGinnis was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, and sometimes that gives him the right" (Carver 132). To the reader, Mel is immediately seen as competent, as surely he is the only person among the couples who can accurately relay the correct definition of love. However, Mel is in fact dumbfounded to the idea of love, and is aggressively participating in the conversation despite his clear failure of a marriage. "Mel and Terri, on the other hand, have been together five years, and their surface-level civility to one another barely masks a deep-seated anger and resentment. Mel 's alcoholism, and increasing drunkenness over the course of the evening, sets a tone of increasingly intensified menace to the whole conversation" (Overview). Therefore, not only is Mel in a failing marriage, but he appears to be the reason behind the decline. Yet, Mel 's pursuit of an absolute answer to love preseceeds unhindered, even as his thought process now begins to contradict itself. "If he sees that Ed 's passion hardly qualifies as love, he need not feel quite as emotionally threatened by the dead lover, but only up to a point. It would not, for example, enhance Mel 's self-image for him to see the parallel between Ed 's

I love books because my books love me back . In moments of distress literature guides me. When I am heavy hearted, I turn to my favorite novels, they reassure me that even in the worst situation good fate always wins . When I am lonely, I reacquaint myself with the safe and familiar characters that I have grew to love. When I am happy, I smile because I have lived the lives of warriors, enchantresses, and even the commonday person. Although the emotional connection between literature and myself is imperishable, there was a time in my life when that bond was nonexistent. However, for one to understand the significant impact stories have had on my life, one must know my life. Thus this story begins with my childhood. A conventional upbringing of sorts but of course my childhood doesn't begin with me. It begins with my parents. My parents met each other at high school when they were fourteen years old . Call it destiny, or mere luck, this one cue meet would define their lives for the next twenty two years. My parents fell quickly and passionately in love. Their devotion for one another as an imminent as their fallout, however, we are not there yet. We are at the bittersweet moments of young love. The moments that make one believe in eternity although these moments themselves cease to last just as long. My parents own version of forever welcomed a young little girl named Nicte Impala Perez on March 18th 1998. In that moment, my parents believed that the three of us could defeat