Love Actually

I've been thinking about something lately that I want to tell you about, and that is love. Oh, I don't mean the kind of love of fairy tale romances, although in a way, I do. I'm talking about the way some people finish their phone calls, especially calls to their parents with the common refrain, "I love you".

We all know that love itself seems to have many forms. To say, "I love pasta" is not the same kind of love as a man for his wife, or a woman for her dog, or a child for his parents, or possibly even a parent for his child. It's the "I love you" for a child to his parents (or vice versa) that I'm interested in. It's not that I doubt children love their parents. I don't.

I do question, however, the importance of saying it. On the one hand, consider people, such as me, who rarely, if ever say, they love their parents. When you rarely say you love someone, then perhaps, you don't, in the sense that you find it difficult to express emotions. Once upon a time, guys weren't supposed to cry. I was told once, that Taiwanese men were supposed to have a stoic demeanor, and I suspect many a society believes in the ideal of stoicism for males. Men don't cry. Men don't easily express love.

Yet, I now live at a time, in America (or the US, to be proper), where such emotions are now taken for granted. You're expected to show love. It's even become commercial. Ask yourself, do you buy your mom or dad presents for Mother's Day or Father's Day? Why do you do it? Because some florist or some online store tells you that you must honor your parents on this of all days? If there were no Mother's Day, would you therefore fail to honor your mother? In fact, outside of Mother's Day and your mom's birthday, do you bother to do nice things for mom? When it becomes a national obligation (combined with maternal guilt trips), is this really love? Shouldn't that be more spontaneous?

And still, the phrase "I love you" at the end of calls, well, it's more like saying "God Bless You" after a sneeze, is it not? A kind of reflex, like hello when you greet someone, or "I'm sorry" when you hear bad news or "Happy Birthday" when it's someone's birthday. Humans are like this, aren't we? We all know people that, when they see someone who, say trips and hurts themselves, are all "Oh my goodness! You hurt yourself! What can I do to help?". They go into histrionics. Is this genuine concern or merely a learned response, that over time, becomes like reflex.

Are such people more compassionate, or merely shown that this is how people should behave, and behave this way? How many of you know someone that would scream in orgasmic delight at seeing a friend they hadn't seen in a while? Does that show more passion than a person who just says hi?

I was once watching an episode of Dawson's Creek (I'm man enough to admit it), where Dawson is admitting to some female friend that he's been a bad friend to Pacey and forgotten about his birthday, and some such. I don't recall the details, but I do recall the sentiment. This show encouraged teens to ask themselves "how truly devoted am I to my friends?". Being a drama, they showed good looking teens angsting over whether they were good friends or not.

This, I'm convinced, put undue pressure on white bread teen America (as Dawson's Creek and shows of its ilk were primarily white) to act in this fashion, to tell teens that if you weren't passionate about your friendship, then you were less than someone special. How many teens now buy into this idea?

What's more disturbing, to me, is how Asian American teens, especially women, can sometimes put white American ideals as their own. Where Asians from other countries seem to be more sensible (in my mind) about career and goals, I've seen some examples of Asian women who effectively want to be cheerleaders, and almost feel the need to be whiter than white. It reminds me, oddly enough, about M. Butterfly or Stage Beauty, both of which deal with issues of men who portray women, and how women can only be themselves, where men can be the idealization of women (possibly, an idealized woman as thought of by a man, but I digress).

To me, such genuflection shows a kind of self-hatred as if one's own culture is not good enough to measure up. I remember watching Mean Girls which dealt with the "plastics", ie, the girls who are popular and bitchy, and decide who can and can't share their company. What might have made it more ethnically interesting is to show girls of different ethnicities trying to fit in.

Oddly enough, I find the portrayals of African American women in shows like The Facts of Life intriguing because they essentially wash any kind of blackness form the character. Now, I'd be the first to tell you that I don't think it's necessary for blacks to act "black". I'm just as happy to see blacks be the whitest person ever, and whites to be the blackest person ever, even if, the way they were raised may prevent them from fully realizing their racial aspiratoins.

To get back on point, do we bandy the word love far too much? I think yes, but is it bad? Sit down, and question your life. Ask yourself what it would be like in a different country, or in the same country with new rules, or new friends. Some of the ideas you hold so highly may blind you to so many other ideas. Take the time to see those other ideas, and perhaps embrace them, if they make sense to you.

Oh....love you!