Veddy Interesting

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I've been watching some Woody Allen movies. I wrote a review of Manhattan; I really enjoyed it. I'd always heard of Woody Allen but never actually watched his works. It only took watching one more (Hannah and Her Sisters) to realize how transparent Allen is. He's a talented movie machine, but he's transparent. His movies center, from what I can tell, around justifying man's inability to defy his own whims. Allen's personal life seems to be whim-coated... I've never heard of another man who married the adopted daughter of his girlfriend of twelve years. Says his 23-year-old son, Ronan Farrow: "He's my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression. I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent...."

“The heart wants what it wants. There’s no logic to those things. You meet someone and you fall in love and that’s that," said Allen. Allen's movies' relationships are plagued with extramarital affairs and disconcerting age differences. He portrays people as having no control over who they love. That's preposterous.

Years ago I heard someone say "love is a choice." Oh! It was an older couple on Oprah. She asked them how they'd stayed in love for so long, and they said that every night, they'd write each other a letter about what about their spouse they were thankful for that day. Both said the letters were easier to write some days than others, which makes total sense. But no matter what, days full of tension and conflict ended in letters of genuine gratitude.

This reminds me of Ephesians 4:26: "Do not let the sun go down on your anger." An Anonymous offered "Happiness is a choice." Emotions are controllable. Okay, perhaps not controllable, but it's choice that transforms anger into contentment and distaste into love. It's the choices people are unwilling to make that limit our emotions. Heck, there are hundreds of choices I am unwilling to make. There are people who will always provoke that facial expression many of you know and love... and I don't care to change my opinion of many of them.

I've spoken with many friends about their discouragement concerning "not being able to help who they love." I don't know how to convince them that what they're experiencing is a lack of will. In the same way that loving a spouse and expressing that love for them is a choice the opposite spouse makes, an unfaithful spouse chooses to refrain from using self control and discernment.

This is a difficult claim to make because so many people marry people they shouldn't have married in the first place. All I'm saying is that marriages that work forever work forever because both people chose to love. I understand "marriage takes work" is not a new idea. Controlling love isn't even a new idea. But not many people have it.

Ideal love doesn't feel like a choice. Ideal love requires no self control. Ideal love is temporary. But the permanent stuff--yep, I'm going there--is worth working for.

***

"One last chance

to say goodbye,

no I-love-yous hanging

on our lips

like bad weeks of the year."