Looking for love

I have always believed that true love, the kind that endures is very boring. There are moments of magic, and bliss but they come with struggles and arguments. However, more than that it really has to do with persevering through daily minutia, chores and other ordinary things that compose our lives.

Of course, in movies and stories love is like a bright burning fire, with lots of fireworks and flowers, which of course love can be, but not all of the time. If that is what one bases their idea love and marriage on, one is doomed to never find happiness.

I have a feeling lot of people in the present society have grown up with the an image of love projected by movies, and that is why even people such as Oprah are suckers for stories such as the one told in the book Angel at the Fence, which has now been proven to be a complete fabrication. It is very sad and bewildering to me that people so badly want to believe that such a love story existed in real life, when it clearly seems so far fetched.

In general, real life provides a good counterbalance to the lives in fiction. You see what you may view as perfection, in books and movies, and then you see lots of real lives around you, and you can form a good sense of reality. In there lies my concern for my children. In our increasingly isolated lives, where we only meet people for a few carefully planned hours, children do not get a glimpse of real life. As a child, I spent lots of time around various family members and learned lot about real life from them. We are so far away from all our family, however, that my children don't spend much time with them either. They basically have two points of view - the marriage of their parents and the storybook romances. As my girls grow and, God forbid, start to read romance novels, I am afraid that their perception of love and romance will get completely skewed without any dose of reality to temper the image. Thus I feel it is my responsibility to seek out books or movies with many different views of love. Therein lies my dilemma - the realistic ones are too adult-oriented with nudity and profanity, and the ones suitable for kids are too candy coated. Any suggestions?

Once, the movie

I enjoyed the film Once and love the soundtrack. I have it on my iPod and since I often play it in the car my daughters enjoy the music too. The other day they asked me that if they could see the movie as well and I am still debating if I should show it to them.

On one hand it could be a very simple decision; the film is rated R because there is a lot of swearing in normal conversations, not the obligatory kind that happens in some Hollywood action films. The story of the film is based in Dublin. There was this other beautiful Irish film I saw which was rated R too because of all the swearing. Do Irish people really swear that much!? Normally I am extremely uncomfortable with swearing. "Shit" is the worst I can do. I can't even hear anything worse than that but somehow Irish swearing doesn't bother me as much.

On the other hand it is a very beautiful film. The romance between the main characters is very simple, realistic and sweet. Unlike most Hollywood movies, even the movies directed towards teens and most music these days, sex isn't portrayed as the be all and end all of the romance. It isn't that big kiss that finally tells you "he loves you", but it is lot of little events and encounters. There is a very awkward attempt at sex in the movies but it doesn't get very far. I think it will be good for my girls to be exposed to this kind of stuff as I doubt they are going to encounter many realistic romances in their lives. I do not want them to grow up with the ridiculous idea of love that pop culture sells these days where love and sex are impossible to distinguish from each other, and there are no conflicts in love.