Blue Valentine, True Relationships, and "The Long Loneliness"...

My friend Mic and I went to see the movie "Blue Valentine" last night, written and directed by Derek Cianfrance, starring Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams and Faith Wladyka. It is a real story of love, revealing the human struggles as well as the joy, light and romance of the relationship between Dean (Gosling) and Cindy (Williams). In an interview with BBC, Gosling shares the impetus of the creation of the film: "Derek wrote it as a reaction to the films he was watching where characters were made in the image of gods. He wanted to make a movie made in the image of man where your flaws are what make you special...This idea of perfection only really exists in movies...with the idea that it's supposed to be perfect all the time, this idea of "happily ever after", but what happens in the ever after part? The characters meet and fall in love but then there's a practical part of trying to keep your love alive. You live in a house together, and you have to share a space and for some reason a lot of love can't exist in those conditions. He was trying to figure out why."

This creation of such a piece of art is long overdue, and fulfills a very relevant gaping void, that shines light on the struggles that all people experience in intimate relationships of all types. Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement speaks of the notion of "The Long Loneliness", in terms of a Spiritual Hunger, a hunger that seems to always be present: "We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community." In her book "Loaves and Fishes", an account of life in the Catholic Worker Homes of Hospitality, she writes: "The greatest challenge of the day is how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution that has to start with each one of us. When we begin to take the lowest place, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers with that burning love, that passion, which led to the Cross, then we can truly say: Now I have begun."

We need one another in many ways, but how do we truly love one another? There is a certain loneliness that can only be filled by God, and not even the most beautiful relationship can erase all of our innate loneliness all of the time. To hope for this, I think is to make gods out of one another. One person can't fulfill all of our aching needs. Our individualized and isolating society has established a faulty formula for success of relationships. However, we do experience glimpses of God by experiencing one another in true community as Dorothy says.

Community to me means communion, and communion to me means the "Body of Christ- or God", literal in the sense of people being alive and present with one another in relationships of love, whether they know or believe in Christ, or believe in "God" or not. If God is love, then when people love one another, isn't God present?

Well, this movie, Blue Valentine, mirrors the struggles that we all have in intimate relationships, which I think will be helpful to many people, in contrast to the usual love story portrayed by Hollywood, that allows us to escape for a couple of hours then hold it as an unrealistic standard to our own lives, of real and at times broken relationships.

I believe it is the greatest challenge to love the other with whom we are in relationship, more than ourselves. That's got to be the most difficult task as humans. With our abundance of aching needs, the most immanent being the need to be loved- to then care for the needs of others.

In recent years, I have struggled with the term "selfless love", as I believe God calls us to be our true selves, therefore we shouldn't eliminate ourselves from the process of loving. Rather perhaps to love with our frail and imperfect humanity, and also our gifts of light, in whole. Ideally, in a relationship or community, if all members are striving to meet the needs of the other, then all needs will be met as people are held and nurtured in a safe and loving environment that also promotes growth. On Earth, in a Kingdom that is both here and not yet, active love seems the best we can strive for.

In our culture today, the concept of marriage; a true commitment to another person even in the midst of that long loneliness is practically null. Even the commitment to Religious life, or any commitment at all, which may at some point leave people feeling not free to do what they want at the exact moment that they want, is diminishing. It is so difficult for me to die to myself at times and in relationships and it's hard to not have many examples of people who remain committed through the bumps of life. How, as humans do we stay true to ourselves and others commitment when the "excitement" we felt when we gave our lives, energy and hope to a person, community, or cause diminishes? How, how, how? 

I want to believe that people can stay committed and make decisions that benefit others over constantly feeding their own needs, and yet our needs do have a valid place sometimes. Furthermore, our culture promotes the idea that essentially we are gods; we are so entitled to everything, and we should receive it all. Any notion that opposes that, must be foolish. The family unit is breaking down because less and less people place value on this structure. However, I think people do truly see it's value but it is becoming foreign to so many. Now we don't even know how to recognize it, let alone emulate it.

Our "flaws" as humans are quite beautiful in some way as it means that we are alive, human, and each unique. I hope to be able to someday celebrate the imperfections within myself and others, and thus in relationships. It is no easy task, as this movie presented. We are all somewhere on this journey of loving, and it will take longer than a lifetime to reach a place of perfect peace and agape within it, but I believe it's still what we must try to do everyday :)