A Valentine in shells! Lovely.
I think love is real. Not only the various chemical reactions associated with love but also the fact that someone can choose to be faithful and committed. Love is not a stand alone thing. It’s connected to many other emotions and choices. Not just one. I’m also a strong believer that love mist bear fruit. You can’t be a cheating abusive person towards someone while saying I love you.
As for things like arranged marriages I don’t think that undermines love at all. Many people in arranged marriages enter them knowing faithfulness is part of the deal and as time goes they fall in love. I think any two people attracted to one another physically with a sense of commitment could end up happily together. Regardless if it’s something that developed over time as friends and then into lovers by a chance encounter or through an arrangement.
I have a handful of friends in long term serious relationships that resulted in being in ongoing marriages at 5+ years currently. These are people in their mid 20s to mid 30s. Some of them are even in arranged marriages.
I think most people desire to be in a romantic relationship with others. Not just because society pushes it because it seems in every nation and culture including far off tribes , and from thousands of years ago to now want them. Same as they desire friendship.
You’ve further piqued my interest. I hadn’t heard of Gaskell before watching this - but now hearing your commentary, I may have to read her story as well. Do you think the BBC dramatization did justice to her writing - or at least as much justice as can be expected from the screen?
[I recall some striking (either humorous or profound or both) lines from some of the characters that I thought … I’ll bet those must have been inspired from her actual written dialogue.]
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Social construct does not necessarily imply a lack of genuineness. Commercialization on the other hand…
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I saw the movie before I read the book, and I loved them both, although there are some minor differences. Unfortunately, she actually died before she finished the book and a friend finished it for her, and I think, finished it very well. The “concluding remarks” are provided in good spirit and speculate how the story should end. I find it a charming end in spite of Gaskell’s death.
If you are in a great hurry to read, you can find it in Project Gutenberg, here: The Project Gutenberg eBook of Wives and Daughters, by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell.
“Cranford” is another of her novels that aired on PBS and was delightful as well. I still need to read the book.
Enjoy!
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What do you think of “North and South”? The Wikipedia article makes it sound like that would be one of her seminal works as well.
I haven’t read it (yet). So, so, so behind. Just picked up 5 more books at a new little Black-owned bookstore in Lansing. I need to read more books and fewer posts!!!
“North and South” is available at Project Gutenberg at this link: North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell - Free Ebook. There’s just so much great stuff to read and learn. Really NEED eternity.
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The Discourse update will help, however!! ; - ) Yay! It has saved me minutes already.
Which reminds me:
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Thanks, Dale. That’s a great poem!
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Isn’t it? My tripping over it was a providence a few years back. My wife was having surgery and the poem was on the back of the card with room and phone number info that they gave me at the surgery waiting desk. 
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(I just checked my Co-instants Log and a few years back was a dozen. 
Also notable – hence my noting it , there were only two couples ahead of us at the 6 a.m. check-in and we knew both of them from before we retired. The husband of one had been a colleague of my wife at the university and the husband of the other had been a colleague of mine at the hospital, and we had probably not seen either for four or five years, at that point. ; - )
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Haha, I keep telling myself this too. 
I have a whole stack of books on my desk that I’ve been wanting to read, and keep saying that I want to read more of John Walton’s Lost World series especially since it’s apropos to this forum, but so far I’ve only read one.
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Romantic love: Biological phenomenon?
Found an article that might be worth looking through.
Falling in love is the easy part, JPM…That is why it is romanticized. And yes, marriages in the past were arranged, and in some cultures still are. They placed value on something beside love…poltical/business connections or the like…And sometimes the only option was “the boy next door.”
And how did Ananias and Sapphira come to mind as rare NT examples of “romance”? I think they were NT examples of how to die young (ish).
No thoughts for the romantically impaired…except that I do love chocolate…
That was me. And I’m probably the only one to have ever brought up the possibility (so far as I know) - which was part of my point: once we’ve all decided which characters have the ‘villain’ label hanging around their neck, we proceed to vilify any and everything about those people. Dying young doesn’t preclude a romantic edge for contemplation. But … yeah … it does take away the ‘happily ever after’ ending we dearly want. And life takes away that part of the ending for all of us in any case, meaning the ‘ever after’, if there is to be one, had better be happening at a higher level. Cue Christ.
I was just saying"I’ll take famous couples in the Bible, Alex."
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That’s a good one, Dale.
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And then I went to a new book store in Lansing yesterday and bought 5 more books to add to the houseful and ebooks. Sigh.
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Glad I’m not the only one. It is fun though… it’s good to always be on the hunt for something new to learn. 
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Radiometric dating is evil. You should only date members of the opposite sex.
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