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| The greatest love story |
Romanticism. Romanticism values imagination and emotion over rationality. Romanticism doesn’t necessarily mean romantic. It can simply mean that a painting or song is extremely emotional. Many famous paintings in the category of romanticism feature either a war or love scene, as war and love are the two most emotional experiences of one’s life. Romanticism paintings are often comprised of sharp contrasts in colors with many light and dark colors, causing the light to seemingly shine like the brightest star and the dark seemingly swallow the light like a deep cave. The lights are brighter, the darks are darker; everything is emphasized by this; everything is emotional.
It’s paintings like these that helped push America towards a Civil War. As Romanticism began to blossom and show glorious images of ancient battles, America was debating over state’s rights. People developed a false sense of splendor from these romantic paintings of war. It was only after the war began that photographs of piles of dead soldiers showed the American people that war was no majestic grandeur.
It was these photographs that disenchanted people from their thoughts of heroic battles; people came to their senses. The romantic paintings weren’t realistic and the American people found out that war was not as celestial as it was depicted.
It is from this history of an artistic era that we get the term “Romantic” when describing someone with seemingly high, or “unrealistic” goals. A romantic may be called a dreamer or an idealist because a romantic views man as being full of potential; always able to improve and get better. Where a “realist” would say, “Fairytale love stories don’t exist,” a romantic would say, “Why can’t a modern day love story happen? And why can’t I be a part of it?”
For a portion of my life, I viewed myself as a cynic when it came to matters of the heart. There was no such thing as true love between two people. Fairytales happened in the studios of Walt Disney World and nowhere else. Sure two people could love each other long enough to die in love, but if they had the chance to live longer, I felt that two people would eventually fall out of love. That was my belief. And anyone who thought Prince Charming and Cinderella would love each other their whole lives was labeled a dreamer in my book.
Until one man proved me wrong. One hell of a man, proved me wrong.
