There are some love stories that are still as special today as they were generations ago, making them timeless moments of inspiration, comfort and joy. But what makes a story timeless? What makes it relevant when our expectations and ideas of love, life and liberty are eternally evolving?
If we consider some of the tales that still move us, we can’t deny that it is the human element that makes it unforgettable. Whether it was the defiance of Romeo and Juliet or Mark Anthony and Cleopatra, the compatibility of Rama and Sita, the seductivity of Marilyn Monroe and Mata Hari, the unwavering hope of Forest Gump, the tumultuous affections of Carrie and Mr. Big or even the humour and delicacy of Audrey Hepburn, it was always the quirky eccentricities and unique characteristics of these heroes and heroines that make their stories worth telling and retelling throughout time.
Time has always been a faceless and unemotional factor in our lives, but it is exactly that impartiality that makes it so valuable. No matter how badly we yearn to control it and urge bad times to move faster or beg good times to linger longer, we can’t sway the great hands of the clock that measures our lives. Who can deny that it has to be a part of the greater plan at large to create time this way and keep it out of man’s reach, for it is far too valuable a commodity to control.
Today love is experienced differently because life is experienced differently. We are more open and accepting of different types of love, yet we are less tolerant and patient with those that we claim to love, which often causes us to move through more relationships than before. Because how we experience our lives is less restricted today, we are not bound by the confines of time to have those experiences at any one stage in our lives. This has opened multiple opportunities for us to love more openly and freely and to discover more about ourselves in the journey of life. The heady rush of this self-discovery and self-love has gifted us with a deeper sense of what love means to us. As we transition through different phases of our lives, the epic love stories of today have become those where both hero and heroine still find themselves drawn to each other as they navigate through their own individual paths.
Could this mean that new age love stories are guaranteed to have an expiration date? Maybe so. Time seems more forgiving now that we have accepted that we don’t need to find love within a specified time frame, but the love affair with our own self discovery can both be destructive and uplifting to our love stories. Time has become less of a requisite for modern love and the battle to defy the odds and hold on to love, is a hindrance of a bygone era. It doesn’t mean that the love stories of the 21st century have any less love in it, they are simply able to pack more complexity into their interactions in less time.
Love in the future will be interesting and just as our lives change even more with enhancements in technology and living standards and norms, so will how we express and experience love. But one thing is for certain, while the faces of who and what we love may look different in the future, our love affair with time will only change in how we experience it. For time, is unmovable and uninterested in our personal journey and only loves its own stability, which, for better or for worse gives us the necessary structure we need to keep loving!
