Love…an identity crisis.

Two challenges when you listen to this Ted Talk called Love—you’re doing it wrong, by Yann Dall’Aglio, firstly is to focus for ten minutes on the sub-titles unless you’re fluent in french (I’m not…) and secondly, to listen to a different view on a topic that already has been written and spoken about for thousands if not millions of times (its called creative license… I have no idea how many times love has been written or spoken about but millions feels about right considering you can’t avoid it completely).

What I enjoyed, besides the different view, is the explanation of what love means in modern times, compared to the past (i.e. before anyone alive now was born) and how love has gone through its own identity crisis. Say what?! I know, imagine that!

Back in the day (about two hundred years ago, not used in the same context as to when your parents use that sentence on you) love was very much a community based tradition. You received your love from falling in line with the community and society you lived in; you followed a set of practices and as long as A, B and C were done you were set for life in this aspect. Nowadays, it’s more individualistic. You could follow A, B, C, D all the way through to Z and still not have that feeling of love you’re looking for; therefore identifying it as a hysterical need to be valued within a seduction capital society. While you have the choice to decide who you find desirable, you in turn can be rejected as undesirable by the very same person you desire. Therein lies this hysterical need to be desirable.

Without giving away the punchline of how to change this view and the intensity of consumerism driving love (look up how diamonds became famous for engagement rings), a certain level of understanding that no one is perfect is required and once that pressure of needing to be perfect and expecting perfection in those we say we love lightens, we calm down the hysteria.

And on that note, (because if you watch the talk, you’ll be reading enough), how do you value love?