Existential bummer By Jason Silva

"Love is the greatest pain of all." As told by Jason Silva.

"Love at first sight is always spoken in the past tense. The scene is perfectly adapted to the temporal phenomenon: distinct, abrupt, framed, it is already a memory. for a certain time, though a finite one, a deranged interval, something has been successful: i have been fulfilled: all my desires abolished by the plenitude of their satisfaction." ... -Roland Barthes.

I've always had a soft spot for love and melancholy, and i think those two things are intimately interrelated. I think there's a related space between love and sadness which is why there's a reason why the film makers use the term 'happy sad' to describe those moments that move us, and swell us so that we become engorged with emotion. 

and Roland Barthes explored this beautifully in his book 'a lovers discourse' there's a couple lines that i really love. he says, "the first thing we love is a scene which is seen for the first time, curtain parts and what had never been seen is devoured by the eyes: distinct, abrupt, framed... it is already a memory." this is the line that gets me. this idea that when we're struck by love it is immediately already a memory, the moment is  happening and you're already mourning the fact that the moment will end. This intertwining of melancholy of loss that is literally embedded into the experience of rapture which makes it so unique and mesmerizing about love but also what makes it so tragic. there's a reason why Roland Barthes sights love as the romantic solution to the problem of death, because our lovers act as stand ins in a staged resurrection where the pilgrim without faith can die and live again. These deaths and rebirth simulations allow us to finally turn our lovers into gods and goddesses and allowing us to be saved by them, its every pop song,its every romantic movie you've ever seen; you know the feeling... It moves us to tears, but who cares! 

Because as Camus said. "Life should be lived to the point of tears." 

So... Fall in love, or die trying. Right?