Love’s Labour’s Lost

The ending of Love’s Labour’s Lost is kind of a downer. It’s this carefree romantic comedy in the spirit of Much Ado About Nothing, only in the end the guys don’t get the girls. The ladies bugger off to France at the last moment, leaving the disappointed men with a task ahead: go to a remote location and study and remain celibate for one year. After that, the ladies will be theirs.

At first glance this ending seems to exist solely for the purpose of throwing off the cliche romantic comedy ending. Oops, not everything turns out the way you think it will. Oh, well. That’s life.

But really there’s a deeper message in this not-so-Hollywood ending. It sends an important message to all of us who’ve ever proclaimed ourselves free of love, even temporarily. The danger is that, like the four kinsmen starring in Love’s Labour’s Lost or Benedick and Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing, we suddenly find ourselves enamored the man or woman of our dreams with or without the mind’s consent. It’s the shock of this sudden love that makes us forget, absolutely, the reasons we enjoyed being single only moments before.

So what does Love’s Labour’s Lost’s non-Hollywood ending teach us? Answer: to wait a moment.

Or a week. Or a month. Or a year.

When you think you’ve found the one, don’t obsess over it. Don’t fuel your hopes with dreams of new beginnings. You don’t have to be skeptical–in fact, I encourage you to be optimistic–but you should always remember that life is hardly ever so simple that you and this other person can suddenly and absolutely accommodate each other’s lives and love without having to overcome some major hurdles. To be more specific, they’re from France and you’re from Nevarre; it just can’t work.

The inspiration for this post came when I realized that, after enduring a heartbreak, just like the characters from LLL I find myself becoming a scholar. I lose myself in thought. I turn on the classical radio station and read Shakespeare and take notes. I read political journals. I start debates with my friends. I take long walks. I read more books.

After his big breakup with his girlfriend of five years, my best friend started playing the guitar. We started having better conversations, too. It was like he woke up a little bit. What is it that makes us undertake a personal renaissance after a romantic disappointment? Is it all about reinvention and improvement of ourselves since we’ve lost confidence in our ability to interest another human being? Or is it simply a distraction?

Perhaps, if used correctly, this tendency to grow our minds in times of sadness can be used not to help us get past relationships, but rather to ensure their longevity. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be about improving or distracting ourselves. Rather, perhaps we should use the urge to lose ourselves in thought as a device to slow ourselves down. Why rush into things? If you feel that you’ve found someone very special, someone you could spend the rest of your life with, and if you think that feeling may be requited, then why push? Before you get too carried away with the idea of love, marriage, and baby carriages, take a step back. Look at your life in context. Are you both living in Nevarre? Maybe not. And if not, then find a way to make yourself understand that things just won’t work out right now. Not the way they are.

It’s a disappointing thought.

But use that disappointment. Mash it up into coal and throw it in the fire; let it drive the engine that makes you think, read, write, take walks, and play the guitar. Let it distract you. Let it improve you. Then, after a week, a month, a year…

…come back and visit that love you felt. And you may be surprised at how much you’ve changed. Even more surprising may be how little you need that love now, contrasted with the memory of how much you needed it a year ago. And you can move on, free and happy, to find true happiness.

But.

If you still want what you were after a year ago… Now you know what you need to do. Now you know what you want. And isn’t that half of living well? If Ferdinand, Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine still want the French girls after their year of celibate study, then they can have it with the knowledge that it’s truly right. Just imagine.

Photo by aussiegal