Love Requires the Risk of Making a Fool of Oneself
Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” tackles the central questions of youth — romance and love. I can remember being disdainful of my peers who claimed, at 14, 15, or 16, to have found the passionate love of their lives, eager to commit and even marry by 18 or before. They were making fools of themselves, I thought. I would wait until I was more mature, with better judgment and wouldn’t, like them, make a fool of myself. What I did not realize is that romance and young love almost always require a willingness to risk making a fool of oneself.
In one sense I was correct that the odds were long and against romantic commitments made in high school. But in refusing to participate in the “too rash, too unadvised, too sudden” Romeo-and-Juliet kind of relationship, I was eschewing experience that would serve me in good stead in the long run. Risking “love-sickness” is all part of psychological development. The longer you wait, the harder you are likely to fall.
It is in the nature of youth that we “assign passionate importance to things and people when we’re young, because we don’t have the breadth of experience to behave more moderately,” as John Green of Crash Course observed in his analysis (Parts 1, 2) of “Romeo and Juliet.”
“You can have this heart to break,” as Billy Joel sang in “And So It Goes.”
“And So It Goes,” by Billy Joel. Lyrics.
And yet, in modern times, I tend to think people need three or four serious romances
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