“Unlike all the hollow substitutes, real love is about gaining, through sacrifice, the ability to see the world through another’s eyes. It’s about learning to know another even as we are known. It’s about triumphing over daily inconveniences and conflicts, not merely surviving them. It’s all about emotionally growing together. And it’s about participating in the redemption of another, even as we are being redeemed. Such love touches and challenges every part of one’s life. In summary, love is learning to respect, adore and cherish the other. True love is always a life-transforming friendship, and such friendship has nothing to do with a constantly overpowering attraction. The danger of hoping for such attraction is that it is impossible to obtain–or to sustain for any length of time, no matter who you’re with…A strong component of the current myth concerning love is that the most challenging part of romance is finding the ‘right’ person; yet this is false. The most challenging, and the most fulfilling, part of romance is learning how to love another selflessly over the long haul. While such attraction is initially blissful and effervescent, it is like the tide, always ebbing and flowing, tempered by our histories, choices and frailties.”
–Greg Jesson, Faith, Film, and Philosophy: Big Ideas on the Big Screen
