What is Love?

My favorite poem from this year is “All Love Letters Are,” by Fernando Pessoa. Throughout the poem, the speaker makes assertions about the ridiculousness of love letters. He/she reflects on how they too wrote equally ridiculous love letters in their past, and continuously assert that because they are love letters, they have to be ridiculous. This poem is my favorite because it’s a very relatable poem. Everyone can relate to eccentric and ridiculous feelings attached to love.  The speaker humorously and ironically strikes back in the poem saying that those who don’t right love letters at all are actually the ridiculous ones. This opinion wittingly uncovers a bit of truth, for those who do act on passion and love most definitely end up looking ridiculous, but, paradoxically, those who do not act are just as ridiculous for letting life and love pass by. This poem swimmingly correlates with my favorite book this year; Everything Matters!, by Ron Currie Jr. In this novel, Currie elegantly and grimly paints a picture of the ridiculous habit of love.  Junior, who constantly sees the pitfalls of love, often thinks, “life has…always seemed a messy and heartbreaking and overall pointless affair” (143). His attempt to reveal his ridiculous knowledge of the end of the world with his love all goes wrong. In this moment, Junior feels the heartbreak and overall ridiculousness of love, feeling that nothing good can ever come of it. The narrator at the story even mocks Junior’s situation and states, “even your best, most loving and generous and bighearted choices had been wrong, wrong, wrong” (266). The voice’s repetition of “wrong” emphasizes how disappointing love can be, especially in Junior’s life. This parallels Pessoa’s poem’s message that love can be a ridiculous, messy thing. However, towards the end of the novel, the voice asserts, “Everything matters not in spite of the end of you and all that you love, but because of it” (292). Here the voice illustrates that even through all of the messy consequences in life, love should be sought out in spite of it all. The terrible circumstances, the inopportune moments that turn out badly, are the reasons why love is ridiculous, and ridiculous enough to make all the hard troubles better. Personally, I enjoy Pessoa’s message that both sides of love are ridiculous, which more people should accept and embrace.