I grew up under the impression that there are a select few people – or even a “one and only” person – to whom anyone could surrender their romantic sensibilities. It turns out that’s not true. Most people will have sex with, date, or even marry someone without being very attracted to them, interested in their personality, impressed by their ambitions and priorities, or connected on some deeper level.

While I came of age under the influence of Catholicism, animated Disney films, and warm-and-fuzzy sitcoms, the rest of Western civilization apparently had different forces acting upon it, leading people to function by codes that I often find bizarre and alienating. To me it always seemed that there was some meaning to the way things happened – not necessarily that everything was predetermined, but that everything undoubtedly happened for a reason. I entertained a certain element of fate or destiny, based largely on the idea that there’s a perfect someone “out there” for all of us, and finding (or holding onto) the person would ensure lifelong happiness.

I now realize that this is one of the major internal battles I’ve been fighting over the past four to five years – ever since my first long-term relationship ended. If there is no “one and only,” then there is no meaning. If there is no fate, there is only chaos and disorder – in other words, the inescapability of the bar scene, the meat market… my worst nightmare.

Marc Webb’s film (500) Days of Summer got me thinking about this again, because it reminded me of some of my own experiences. The character Summer shares a number of eerie similarities with girls I’ve known over the years. Certain moments seem torn from my own memory, which I think I can relay here without spoiling much because, as the filmmakers announce at the start, “this is not a love story.”

Watching (500) Days made me think, more than anything, that I’ve been very closed-off to life over the past two years or so. But my “coming of age” process involved the ceremonial killing of nearly every dream I had espoused since childhood.

At the end of the film, the characters Summer and Tom are talking about how she met a new guy soon after the end of their relationship. He says, “You could have told me,” as if he would have tried to divert her. She says not to think of it that way because “it was meant to be” – she was supposed to end up with the new guy. She doesn’t extend it to fate or God or anything like that. She simply says that she could have been at a different place that day, or chosen not to leave home – but she went to a specific restaurant or store, and met the new romantic interest. Ultimately she had never felt sure about Tom, so there was no way it could have worked out. That doesn’t mean she wanted to hurt him, or that what they experienced together was meaningless to her.

*     *     *

I’m torn on this analysis and its broader implications. Part of my recent thoughts on the topic of suicide stem from a feeling that there is no order, purpose, or meaning to life at all. This was the culmination of a few years spent privately studying Existentialism. But the only place that leads is a dead end – a grim, hopeless vacuum, in which even the idea that our actions can provide meaning seems to be a lie. We have to die eventually – we don’t have to live. We didn’t chose to be brought here, but we do, in a sense, have the choice to stay or leave.

But another part of me feels that life’s a privilege, and, as Camus relayed from Nietzsche in The Myth of Sisyphus, it does seem to be worthwhile in spite of the fundamental absurdity. It’s just much harder to transfer that word – “absurd” – into the context of the real world and still be able to accept that statement.

What I mean is that there’s very little margin between the notion that things happen as they were meant to, and a belief in fate or a higher power. When I survey our society, I find very little evidence for things happening in a meaningful or just way. But I find millions of people devoted to mass creeds (i.e. monotheistic religions), people who insist that things happen according to God’s plan. I don’t intend to enter upon a religious discussion, only to point out that it might be impossible to lay claim to any meaning without going all the way.

Yet I feel conflicted. Watching (500) Days made me think, more than anything, that I’ve been very closed-off to life over the past two years or so. My “coming of age” process involved the ceremonial killing of nearly every dream I had espoused since childhood. I tried to re-focus my career path, but knew all along that it would be a compromise – that the budding urge to write, to dedicate my life to creative work, expression and truth would eventually consume my entire being. As I progress through my twenties, I become more isolated, dejected and lonely. But I am progressing down that creative path – I can’t deny that. And I found love again, though I’ve struggled to convince myself that someone could actually put up with my quirks indefinitely.

Despite my cold and bitter aura of late, (500) Days stoked a dull cinder inside me that I thought had most certainly been extinguished. Tom’s jaw-dropped expression when Summer says she likes the Smiths, his celebratory (choreographed) dance scene out by the fountain, the cityscape he designs as a monument to his lost love – all of that made me tingle, whether the moment was delightful or bittersweet. I cried repeatedly throughout the latter half of the film. The first time was when Feist’s “Mushaboom” finally made its way into an indie romance flick (her album Let It Die miraculously held my spirits afloat during troubled times in 2006). But my tear ducts weren’t emptying just because I related to Tom’s romantic yearnings and broken-hearted desperation. Nor was I bawling simply because Summer reminded me of females I’ve had feelings for who, to varying extents, were guarded or hesitant.

In short, this film made me miss feeling completely and utterly alive. I think the sensation is usually described as the loss of innocence, but somehow that doesn’t fit here. I don’t think innocence is necessarily lacking in the many adults (at least, other than by extrapolation to society as a whole) who have retreated from the outer world, safeguarded by their beliefs, their televisions, and the locks on their door. In the zombie-fied glare that dominates most of our so-called activity, I don’t see a gap of innocence; I see the slow victory of death, mashed together with untended guilt and regret. The other popular explanation most would offer is that this is what it means to “grow up.” I’m not convinced by that either, mostly because of the persisting juvenile state in which the human race has currently settled.

* * *

Certain visionary writers and spiritual leaders have suggested that it’s possible to reinvigorate that state of heightened awareness and persist in an appreciation for the privilege of life. (500) Days forced me, through pure emotional assault, to consider that prospect in my own life. Yes, the hardships are ridiculous, the world does seem to be getting worse instead of steadily progressing, and some days I’m glad I don’t have a loaded gun in my home. But there’s still love, there’s still music, babies still laugh, daffodils still sprout early each spring, and Orion still dons his diamond-studded belt each clear winter night.

Romanticism doesn’t work as an ideology, a paradigm to understand all the workings of our civilization. Furthermore, our culture has lost most of its faith in the romantic pursuit, cordoning it off to mass-marketed movies, sitcoms and paperback books. Perhaps this is just my way of not ruling out something that felt so true earlier in my life. Though I can’t deny that it’s been present all along, albeit in a subdued, damaged form. And in a way all the strife, loathing and bloodshed seem to happen in response to our romantic ideals not manifesting themselves automatically.

Maybe the romantic spirit is still a worthwhile aspect of Western culture (or of human nature) – maybe we’ve just lost track of it. It could be that the last decade was a painful but necessary transitioning period, a pessimistic winter extending from the nuclear winter that was never consummated by the Cold War. It seems every day there are signs of a greater awareness of humanity, fostered largely by the Internet and, to a lesser extent, by psychoactive drugs. People seem to have a sturdier conviction that we are here for good and there will be no exit, nor any sanctuary.

Now our only task it to build the garden that’s been stuck in our collective dreams, the one that has always seemed to be our lost place of origin, not our imminent destination. That nagging sense of guilt we’ve felt for millennia – that is surmountable. Just as Tom longs to regain his love with Summer, we lament the loss of the summers of our youth, the season wholly representative of innocence. But like Tom did, we’ll inevitably see that the innocence was never gone, that its loss was an illusion – a temporary injury, perhaps one that encourages adaptivity in us. That insight is how Tom opens his heart to a woman named Autumn – a simple enough plot device, but one that’s all too relevant. After all, to see the purity of human life once summer has passed it to recognize that the purity is an inextricable part of what it means to be alive.

* * *

I’m still not convinced that any of this is preordained. I think of it more in terms of a natural progression. It’s the way of our evolution. If not, we would have blown each other up by now. What I’m suggesting is the possibility that Summer was right, that the outcome of their love was meant to be. Even the most secular of scientists could admit that natural processes happen in the world with total disregard as to our foresight or comprehension. What’s required is a willingness to open oneself up, time and time again, in the face of disaster and adversity. Then maybe our notion of the romantic will be transformed from a joke to an actual possibility, with all the layers of false beliefs stripped away to expose the core aspect of humanity that lies therein.

That thought is best represented in the film by a classic Smiths’ song – the one playing on Tom’s headphones when the main characters first connect. Since it was written in 1986, the song has revived an endless number of shriveled hearts, thanks largely to Morrissey’s calming British croon and his repeated declaration: “There is a light that never goes out.”

So here’s hoping it never does.

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