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beccaelizabeth... and Highlander and Forever Knight and probably every other show I've ever watched:
The concept of One True Love is *damn* depressing.
It's clearest with the immortal characters. Or specific episodes - someone a few weeks back wrote about how Girl in the Fireplace is like a one episode explanation of why One True Love is not a worky concept for the Doctor.
But it isn't a worky concept for *anyone*, in my head. I mean, okay, some people seem to make it work, but...
There's a speech in... is it Due South? I don't exactly remember. Cops on stakeout, sitting around talking. And they're talking about finding The One. You know, if there is a One True Love, how do you find them? Six billion people on the planet, lots of people to meet. And maybe the one you just met is The One, but maybe they're something like 1,000 instead, and next week you'll meet 600, and then what? And what if The One stepped in front of a bus, and you can search and wait as long as you want but you'll never ever find them.
If you believe in the One, you've got to belive in Fate and all that predestination, because there's no other logical chance of ever meeting them, let alone having it all work out.
And I won't believe in Fate. Fate is a player that reduces us to preset moves, puppets in someone else's story. I set Free Will above anything, including survival. Though admittedly surviving is, as far as we know, a necessary precondition for the continued exercise of free will - but certain kinds of 'upgrade' would wipe free will to guarantee survival, and I'd rather die. There is no fate but what we make, and I'm the storyteller.
So maybe there is only One, but you choose them. That works out better. Bump into somebody, have coffee, decide they're what you've been looking for, or close enough. Decide to share the rest of your life with them.
You want to believe in One True Love without immortality?
Somebody dies first. That's just the way it works.
And maybe there's forever waiting the other side of death. But I've never seen it. It doesn't seem to be a very helpful idea, to invent something impossible/inevitable like that. Can't get there / must get there. What up with that?
This life? The one we know exists? I'm more about trying to figure out how to live it.
The one thing I'm quite sure of about this life (and about every life actually, though I can't prove it) is that change is. Change always is.
So you change, and so does your True Love, and what if you don't change the same ways? Or you do, and can't live with it anyway?
Seen too many people stick together 'for better or for worse' when it's the other one of them went worse. Fuck that for a lark.
Because that's not what love is. Attachment, maybe. Getting stuck on some object - some 'person' that exists somehow independently from anything they've done.
Love is a process. A shared life. I'm pretty sure of that, though I do admit an ongoing lack of practical experience. But we only know each other through experience, through performance, through acts. We have this grand ideal of seeing into each other's hearts and souls... I don't think souls exist, exactly. Not as some unchanging essence somehow seperate from yet creating a person. We are what we do. And if what we do is drink and fight and hurt people who depend on us, how the hell can any feeling towards all that be *love*?
And maybe realising that is heartbreaking - hell, no maybe about it, *that* one I've got knowledge of - but is what is. It isn't love, if there's nothing left of the beloved. A face and some history does not a person make.
And everything changes, and nothing is lost - history remains. I always will have been a Highlander fan, so my tattoo can mean something forever. You always will have been in love. But that doesn't mean that here and now has love in.
Maybe later - I believe in redemption for vampires, enlightenment for all - but right now? Maybe not.
One True Love implies that means losing your only shot. Hell of a thing, to weigh that up against current harm. Can see why some would not.
Believe in One True Love, think you've lost it, and sitting in a car filled with exhaust fumes starts looking reasonable. Everything is in the past. No second chances, because you can't go back. History said so.
(History doesn't know everything, but that's a different point.)
I don't much like it when people come up with 'time heals all wounds'. More likely, 'what don't kill us makes us stronger'. Because that at least recognises there is an end game in there. It's like saying something always turns up - yes, alive people can say that, because it always has so far. Dead people maybe have a different story.
This is one reason I like reading about Immortals. Because they don't die, they have to keep going. They have to find a way to keep going. Have to find a way to live.
It's like the Buddhist thing, the basic problem as stated by those that believe in reincarnation - you live. That's the only game in town. You can't wait for heaven, you can't sit around and hope someone will lift you out of this. You have to find a way to live.
Which is a hell of a lot more useful, to my way of thinking. No offence to them that see it different, but from where I'm sitting, we are alive, so really we all do have to figure that part out.
And all together, because we're all here at once. One very large life with six billion in it. Doesn't end when any one person does.
The limited One True Love thing has one life built between two, and doesn't seem to acknowledge the possibility of one or both wrecking it. The big compassion love the world thing knows some people are wrecking it but tries to get them to stop. But it doesn't sit around dependent in some tiny two person world being beat up. There's a huge world out there. Always someone around who won't be wrecking you.
And there's another side to this One business - what about compassion? What about looking at every living being and thinking they're all worth it?
Things I like about the Doctor - he looks at everyone, whatever shape they are, and he sees people.
Captain Jack sees people he could fall in love with. Or, possibly, shag. We don't quite know he's got that one any more sorted than Owen has, though we do rather hope.
But how cool is that? Infinite Diversity, Infinite Combination. Value all of them, because you could share a life. You *are* sharing - we are alive, right here, right now.
Doctor has twice the heart, more room.
One wonders what Jack has twice as much of...
(... and this one remembers a certain comment about 'never doing that again' and the Tarot card The World, which in some versions represents the complete being as hermaphrodite... )
Taking all that and trying to fit it into One True Love... Depressing. Because it's saying the other six billion on this planet, the other countless living beings, aren't worth quite that much. When there's a bastard who seems to not value anyone yet,
valuing the One seems like a pretty good start. But when they're already dancing with the whole blessed universe?
I don't want to think of them becoming that small.
It is possible to love completely, and yet love more than one.
It is, in fact, desireable. And an ideal of many religions. Though for reasons unknown, some of them leave the sex parts out.
Possibly because it do tend to get a bit complicated having someone be more than 5 places at once.
Doesn't mean it's bad to try.
The concept of One True Love is *damn* depressing.
It's clearest with the immortal characters. Or specific episodes - someone a few weeks back wrote about how Girl in the Fireplace is like a one episode explanation of why One True Love is not a worky concept for the Doctor.
But it isn't a worky concept for *anyone*, in my head. I mean, okay, some people seem to make it work, but...
There's a speech in... is it Due South? I don't exactly remember. Cops on stakeout, sitting around talking. And they're talking about finding The One. You know, if there is a One True Love, how do you find them? Six billion people on the planet, lots of people to meet. And maybe the one you just met is The One, but maybe they're something like 1,000 instead, and next week you'll meet 600, and then what? And what if The One stepped in front of a bus, and you can search and wait as long as you want but you'll never ever find them.
If you believe in the One, you've got to belive in Fate and all that predestination, because there's no other logical chance of ever meeting them, let alone having it all work out.
And I won't believe in Fate. Fate is a player that reduces us to preset moves, puppets in someone else's story. I set Free Will above anything, including survival. Though admittedly surviving is, as far as we know, a necessary precondition for the continued exercise of free will - but certain kinds of 'upgrade' would wipe free will to guarantee survival, and I'd rather die. There is no fate but what we make, and I'm the storyteller.
So maybe there is only One, but you choose them. That works out better. Bump into somebody, have coffee, decide they're what you've been looking for, or close enough. Decide to share the rest of your life with them.
You want to believe in One True Love without immortality?
Somebody dies first. That's just the way it works.
And maybe there's forever waiting the other side of death. But I've never seen it. It doesn't seem to be a very helpful idea, to invent something impossible/inevitable like that. Can't get there / must get there. What up with that?
This life? The one we know exists? I'm more about trying to figure out how to live it.
The one thing I'm quite sure of about this life (and about every life actually, though I can't prove it) is that change is. Change always is.
So you change, and so does your True Love, and what if you don't change the same ways? Or you do, and can't live with it anyway?
Seen too many people stick together 'for better or for worse' when it's the other one of them went worse. Fuck that for a lark.
Because that's not what love is. Attachment, maybe. Getting stuck on some object - some 'person' that exists somehow independently from anything they've done.
Love is a process. A shared life. I'm pretty sure of that, though I do admit an ongoing lack of practical experience. But we only know each other through experience, through performance, through acts. We have this grand ideal of seeing into each other's hearts and souls... I don't think souls exist, exactly. Not as some unchanging essence somehow seperate from yet creating a person. We are what we do. And if what we do is drink and fight and hurt people who depend on us, how the hell can any feeling towards all that be *love*?
And maybe realising that is heartbreaking - hell, no maybe about it, *that* one I've got knowledge of - but is what is. It isn't love, if there's nothing left of the beloved. A face and some history does not a person make.
And everything changes, and nothing is lost - history remains. I always will have been a Highlander fan, so my tattoo can mean something forever. You always will have been in love. But that doesn't mean that here and now has love in.
Maybe later - I believe in redemption for vampires, enlightenment for all - but right now? Maybe not.
One True Love implies that means losing your only shot. Hell of a thing, to weigh that up against current harm. Can see why some would not.
Believe in One True Love, think you've lost it, and sitting in a car filled with exhaust fumes starts looking reasonable. Everything is in the past. No second chances, because you can't go back. History said so.
(History doesn't know everything, but that's a different point.)
I don't much like it when people come up with 'time heals all wounds'. More likely, 'what don't kill us makes us stronger'. Because that at least recognises there is an end game in there. It's like saying something always turns up - yes, alive people can say that, because it always has so far. Dead people maybe have a different story.
This is one reason I like reading about Immortals. Because they don't die, they have to keep going. They have to find a way to keep going. Have to find a way to live.
It's like the Buddhist thing, the basic problem as stated by those that believe in reincarnation - you live. That's the only game in town. You can't wait for heaven, you can't sit around and hope someone will lift you out of this. You have to find a way to live.
Which is a hell of a lot more useful, to my way of thinking. No offence to them that see it different, but from where I'm sitting, we are alive, so really we all do have to figure that part out.
And all together, because we're all here at once. One very large life with six billion in it. Doesn't end when any one person does.
The limited One True Love thing has one life built between two, and doesn't seem to acknowledge the possibility of one or both wrecking it. The big compassion love the world thing knows some people are wrecking it but tries to get them to stop. But it doesn't sit around dependent in some tiny two person world being beat up. There's a huge world out there. Always someone around who won't be wrecking you.
And there's another side to this One business - what about compassion? What about looking at every living being and thinking they're all worth it?
Things I like about the Doctor - he looks at everyone, whatever shape they are, and he sees people.
Captain Jack sees people he could fall in love with. Or, possibly, shag. We don't quite know he's got that one any more sorted than Owen has, though we do rather hope.
But how cool is that? Infinite Diversity, Infinite Combination. Value all of them, because you could share a life. You *are* sharing - we are alive, right here, right now.
Doctor has twice the heart, more room.
One wonders what Jack has twice as much of...
(... and this one remembers a certain comment about 'never doing that again' and the Tarot card The World, which in some versions represents the complete being as hermaphrodite... )
Taking all that and trying to fit it into One True Love... Depressing. Because it's saying the other six billion on this planet, the other countless living beings, aren't worth quite that much. When there's a bastard who seems to not value anyone yet,
valuing the One seems like a pretty good start. But when they're already dancing with the whole blessed universe?
I don't want to think of them becoming that small.
It is possible to love completely, and yet love more than one.
It is, in fact, desireable. And an ideal of many religions. Though for reasons unknown, some of them leave the sex parts out.
Possibly because it do tend to get a bit complicated having someone be more than 5 places at once.
Doesn't mean it's bad to try.