Though I don't really talk about love.

In one of my subjects, we were asked to write an essay about a book/movie/poem/song that best describes what love for us is. Though I'm not really sure if I should be posting mine here, I will anyway.

Enjoy?

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Love as Defined by By the River Piedra, I Sat Down and Wept
(22Feb07, 11something a.m.)

“But love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current.
For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn’t even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control” (Coelho, 1998).

Love has always been one of the most exhausted themes in literature. However, in most works that I’ve read, its essence has already been twisted, oftentimes wrongly depicted as the cliché that it seemingly is: two people meet each other, become comfortable, fall in love, encounter problems, resolve said problems and live happily ever after. Voila, a love story.

Coelho’s By the River Piedra, I Sat Down and Wept, however, is different. I have never encountered a book that described love as vividly and as accurately this did. It presented love not only as the cliché that it is, but as something more divine. It was shown as something that transcends even human understanding, something that involves not only the couple but also Someone greater than anything else: God.

Being the devout that I am, I actually considered writing about one of my favorite verses in the Bible (1 Corinthians 13). Paul writes to the Corinthians about how sacred love is, and how it should be treated with reverence. I love these verses because, though Paul did not use that much images to drive his point through, he had explained the concept so well. In relation to Coelho’s work, I would say he had explained the concept with the same line of thought, only with a lot more images. This is exactly why I love the book.

Moreover, it has presented love quite realistically, unlike most cliché love stories in which readers are fully aware of its unrealism, and thus, do not strike them as much.

I’d like to end with a few more lines from the book, ones that I feel will truly justify the point I have made:

“… The more we love, the closer we come to spiritual experience. Those who are truly enlightened, those whose souls are illuminated by love, have been able to overcome all the inhibitions and preconceptions of their era. They have been able to sing, to laugh, and to pray out loud; they have danced and shared what Saint Paul called ‘the madness of saintliness’. They have been joyful – because those who love conquer the world and have no fear of loss. True love is an act of total surrender (emphasis added)” (Coelho, 1998).

Pilar, the main character of the novel, had said, “All love stories are the same.” Whether they be of a man and a woman, a mother and her child, or a God and His prophet, love will always be the fire blazing between these two individuals, forcing them to submit to its power.

“All love stories are the same.”